ve, a
derivative, a historical knout, a school to which history only shows
itself _a posteriori_, like the God of Israel to his servant Moses,
the historical juridical school would have invented German history,
were it not itself an invention of German history.

On the other hand, good-humoured enthusiasts, Teutomaniacs by
upbringing and freethinkers by reflexion, seek for our history of
freedom beyond our history in the Teutonic primeval woods. But in what
respect is our freedom history distinguished from the freedom history
of the boar, if it is only to be found in the woods? Moreover, as one
shouts into the wood, so one's voice comes back in answer ("As the
question, so the answer"). Therefore peace to the Teutonic primeval
woods.

But war to German conditions, at all events! They lie below the level
of history, they are liable to all criticism, but they remain a
subject for criticism just as the criminal who is below the level of
humanity remains a subject for the executioner.

Grappling with them, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the
head of passion. It is no anatomical knife, it is a weapon. Its object
is its enemy, which it will not refute but destroy. For the spirit of
the conditions has been refuted. In and for themselves they are no
memorable objects, but existences as contemptible as they are
despised. Criticism has already settled all accounts with this
subject. It no longer figures as an end in itself, but only as a
means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential work is
denunciation.

What we have to do is to describe a series of social spheres, all
exercising a somewhat sluggish pressure upon each other, a general
state of inactive dejection, a limitation which recognizes itself as
much as it misunderstands itself, squeezed within the framework of a
governmental system, which, living on the conservation of all
meannesses, is itself nothing less than meanness in government.

What a spectacle! On the one hand, the infinitely ramified division of
society into the most varied races, which confront each other with
small antipathies, bad consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and
precisely because of the ambiguous and suspicious positions which they
occupy towards each other, such positions being devoid of all real
distinctions although coupled with various formalities, are treated by
their lords as existences on sufferance. And even more. The fact that
they are ruled, governed, and owne