, therefore, marks the dawning of the
historical period in which the ethical principle of the working
classes is consciously accepted as the guiding principle of society.

We have reason to congratulate ourselves upon living in an epoch
consecrated to the achievement of this exalted end. But, above all, it
is to be said, since it is the destined course of this historical
period to make their conception the guiding principle of society, it
behooves the working classes to conduct themselves with all moral
earnestness, sobriety and studious deliberation.

Such, expressed in the briefest terms, is the content and the course
of argument of the disquisition in question.

What I have sought to accomplish in that argument is nothing else than
to explain to my auditors the intrinsic philosophical content of the
historical development, to initiate them into this most difficult of
all the sciences, to bring home to them the fact that history is a
logical whole which unfolds step by step under the guidance of
inexorable laws.

One who gives himself up to work of this kind is entitled to address
your public prosecutor in the words of Archimedes, when, at the
sacking of Syracuse, he was set upon, sword in hand, by the savage
soldiery while drawing and studying his mathematical figures in the
sand: "_Noli turbare circulos meos_."[53]

To enable me to write this pamphlet, five different sciences, and more
than that, have had to be brought into cooeperation and had to be
mastered: History in the narrower sense of the term, Jurisprudence and
the History of Law, Political Economy, Statistics, Finance, and, last
and most difficult of the sciences, the science of thought, or
Philosophy.

What a paragon of scientific erudition must the public prosecutor be,
in whose eyes all this is not sufficient to lend a publication the
attribute of scientific quality.

But the indictment itself, when it is more closely examined, is seen
to assign the ground on which this work is held to lack the requisite
scientific character. The indictment says: "While the defendant,
Lassalle, has been at pains to give himself the appearance of
scientific method in this address, still the address is after all of a
thoroughly practical bearing."

So it appears, then, that, according to the public prosecutor, the
address is not scientific because it is claimed to have a practical
bearing. The test of scientific adequacy, according to the public
prosecutor, is