ess, the criticism of speculative jurisprudence does not run
back upon itself, but assumes the shape of problems for whose solution
there is only one means: practice.

The question arises: can Germany attain to a practice _a la hauteur de
principes_,[5] that is, to a revolution which will not only raise her
to the level of modern nations, but to the human level which will be
the immediate future of these nations?

The weapon of criticism cannot in any case replace the criticism of
weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force, but
theory too becomes a material force as soon as it grasps weapons.
Theory is capable of grasping weapons as soon as its argument becomes
_ad hommine_, and its argument becomes _ad hominem_ as soon as it
becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the matter by its root. Now
the root for mankind is man himself. The evident proof of the
radicalism of German theory, and therefore of its practical energy, is
its outcome from the decisive and positive abolition of religion.

The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the
supreme being for mankind, and therefore with the categorical
imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a degraded,
servile, neglected, contemptible being, conditions which cannot be
better described than by the exclamation of a Frenchman on the
occasion of a projected dog tax: "Poor dogs; they want to treat you
like men!"

Even historically, theoretical emancipation has a specifically
practical significance for Germany. Germany's revolutionary past is
particularly theoretical, it is the Reformation. Then it was the monk,
and now it is the philosopher in whose brain the revolution begins.

Luther vanquished servility based upon devotion, because he replaced
it by servility based upon conviction. He shattered faith in
authority, because he restored the authority of faith. He transformed
parsons into laymen, because he transformed laymen into parsons. He
liberated men from outward religiosity, because he made religiosity an
inward affair of the heart. He emancipated the body from chains,
because he laid chains upon the heart.

But if Protestantism is not the true solution, it was the true
formulation of the problem. The question was no longer a struggle
between the layman and the parson external to him; it was a struggle
with his own inner parson, his parsonic nature. And if the protestant
transformation of German laymen into parsons