to the
dominance of the bourgeoisie as an historical fact by showing the
logical necessity of this dominance. I reconcile them to it, for a
comprehension of the rationality of what restricts us is the fullest
possible reconciliation to it.

And if I proceed, further, to show that the idea of the bourgeoisie is
not the highest stage of the historical development, not the perfect
flower of advancing improvement, but that beyond it lies yet a higher
manifestation of the human spirit, and that this ulterior phase rests
on the former as its base--does this mean that I incite to hatred and
contempt of the former?

The working class might as well hate and despise themselves and all
human nature, whether in their own or in their neighbors' persons,
because it is the law of human nature to unfold step by step and to
proceed to each succeeding stage of development from the indispensable
vantage ground of the phase preceding.

If I had any predilection for homiletical discourse, Gentlemen, I
should be quite justified in saying that I have exhorted the working
classes to a filial piety toward the bourgeoisie, in that I have shown
that the dominance of the bourgeoisie was the indispensable
prerequisite and condition by transition out of which alone the idea
of the working class could come forth. For even if the son, by grace
of a freer and fuller education and a larger endowment of personal
force, strives to place himself above the level on which his father
stood, still he never forgets the source of his own blood and the
author of his own being. How deep in the mud is it the intention to
thrust the noblest of all the sciences in bringing this charge of
criminal instigation against the doctrine that history is an unfolding
evolution of reason and human liberty?

It was for long incomprehensible to me how the public prosecutor could
use such words as instigation to hatred and contempt in this
connection. In the end I have been able to explain this fact to myself
only on this one supposition. The public prosecutor must have
endeavored in reading this address, to put himself in the place of a
working man and has then come to feel that he would in such a case be
moved to hatred.

The public prosecutor, then, is sensible that he would hate.

Now, Gentlemen, I might say that this would be attributable to the
peculiarity of his temperament, and that he had no call to generalize
and go beyond that. But I will lend a hand to the publ