s' revolt, is not to play the
schoolmaster to this event, but to study its peculiar character. For
this a certain amount of scientific insight and some goodwill is
necessary, whereas for the other operation a glib phraseology,
saturated in shallow egoism, fully suffices.

Why does "Prussian" judge the German workers so contemptuously?
Because he finds that the "whole question,"--namely the question of
labour distress--has not yet been taken up by the "all-comprehending
political soul." He carries his Platonic love to the political soul so
far as to say:

"All revolts which break out from the isolation of men from the
community and the separation of their thoughts from the social
principles will be extinguished in blood and unreason; but if the
distress first creates the understanding, and if the political
understanding of the Germans discovers the roots of social distress,
then these incidents would also be felt in Germany as the symptom of a
great transformation."

In the first half of the sentence we read: if distress creates
understanding, and in the second half: if political understanding
discovers the roots of social distress. Simple understanding in the
first half of the antithesis becomes political understanding in the
second half, just as the simple distress of the first half of the
antithesis becomes social distress in the second half. Why has the
artist in style so unequally endowed the two halves of the antithesis?

Had "Prussian" written: "If social distress creates political
understanding, and if political understanding discovers the roots of
social distress," the absurdity of this antithesis could not have
escaped any impartial reader. Such a reader would have immediately
wondered why the anonymous writer did not couple social understanding
with social distress and political understanding with political
distress, as the simplest logic dictates? Now to business.

So false is it to say that social distress creates political
understanding that the truth is rather the reverse; social well-being
creates political understanding. Political understanding is an
intellectual quality and is given to him who already has, who lives in
clover. Our "Prussian" should hear what a French political economist,
M. Michel Chevalier, has to say upon this subject: "In the year 1789
when the bourgeoisie revolted, the sole thing they wanted was a share
in the government of the country. Emancipation consisted in snatching
the