ent of the Hebrew faith. Whatever the motive, the
act was a voluntary one. A great admirer of the eighteenth-century
"materialists," and a disciple of Voltaire, he believed in God, he said,
as Newton, Locke, and Leibnitz had done before him. He discussed
religious and philosophical questions very freely and frankly with his
son, and read Voltaire and Racine with him. As for the mother of Marx,
she also believed in God--"not for God's sake, but for my own," she
explained when asked about it.

At the earnest behest of his father, Marx studied law at the
universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. But "to please himself" he
studied history and philosophy, winning great distinction in these
branches of learning. He graduated in 1841, as a Doctor of Philosophy,
with an essay on the philosophy of Epicurus, and it was his purpose to
settle at Bonn as a professor of philosophy. The plan was abandoned,
partly because he had already discovered that his bent was toward
political activity, and partly because the Prussian government had made
scholastic independence impossible, thus destroying the attractiveness
of an academic career. Accordingly, Marx accepted the editorship of a
democratic paper, the _Rhenish Gazette_, in which he waged bitter,
relentless war upon the government. Time after time the censors
interfered, but Marx was too brilliant a polemicist, even thus early in
his career, and far too subtle for the censors. Finally, at the request
of his managers, who hoped thus to avoid being compelled to suspend the
publication, Marx retired from the editorship. This did not serve to
save the paper, however, and it was suppressed by the government in
March, 1843.

Soon after this Marx went to Paris, with his young bride of a few
months, Jenny von Westphalen, the playmate of his childhood. The Von
Westphalens were of the nobility, and a brother of Mrs. Marx afterward
became a Prussian Minister of State. The elder Von Westphalen was half
Scotch, related, on his maternal side, to the Argyles. He was a lineal
descendant of the Duke of Argyle who was beheaded in the reign of James
II. His daughter tells an amusing story of how Marx, many years later,
having to pawn some of his wife's heirlooms, especially some heavy,
antique silver spoons which bore the Argyle crest and motto, "Truth is
my maxim," narrowly escaped arrest on suspicion of having robbed the
Argyles![50] To Paris, then, Marx went, and there met, among others,
Heinrich Hein