ic prosecutor in
this perplexity. I will bring the charge against myself in a more
telling form than he has been able to do. I will formulate it as the
facts of the case require that it must be formulated if it is to be
preferred at all. And in so doing, the more pointedly I may be able to
bring to light the essential nature of the charge, the more utterly
shall I annihilate it.

This is what the public prosecutor should have said:

It is true this address held by Lassalle appeals to the intellect of
the auditors, not to their practical impulses or their emotions. It is
accordingly true also that this address does not come within the
sphere of competence of the penal code.

But in a person endowed with the normal complement of human
sensibility, cognition, will and emotion are not so many insulated
pigeonholes which stand in no relation to one another. Whenever the
one compartment is full it flows over into the next. Will and emotion
are servants of the intellect and are controlled by it.

Lassalle, it is true, has not a word to say of hatred and contempt; he
is simply occupied with a theoretical exposition of how certain
arrangements, for instance, the three-class suffrage, is pernicious. I
am unable to confute this teaching. But I have this to say with
respect to the organic unity of human nature, that if the doctrine is
true then it follows that every normally constituted working man must
come to hate and distrust not only these arrangements and institutions
but also those who profit by them.

Such is the logical framework on which this indictment must proceed.
This is the line of argument which avowedly or not, by logical
necessity comes to expression in this indictment.

It is not I, but the public prosecutor speaking from the eminence of
his curule chair, who proclaims to the working classes the awful
doctrine: You must hate and distrust.

It is not for me, it is for the public prosecutor to square himself
with the bourgeoisie.

But what is my answer to the public prosecutor and his indictment
which charges me with his own offense?

My answer is a four-fold one:

In the first place a full recognition of the inadequacy or the
viciousness of a given institution must arouse in any person of normal
sensibility an enduring purpose to change such an institution, if
possible, and the arousing of such an undying purpose in my hearers
has necessarily been the aim of my scientific investigation, as it
necessar