emancipated the lay
popes, the princes, together with their clergy, the privileged and the
philistines, the philosophic transformation of the parsonic Germans
into men will emancipate the people. But little as emancipation stops
short of the princes, just as little will the secularization of
property stop short of church robbery, which was chiefly set on foot
by the hypocritical Prussians. Then the Peasants' War, the most
radical fact of German history, came to grief on the reef of theology.
To-day, when theology itself has come to grief, the most servile fact
of German history, our _status quo_, will be shivered on the rock of
philosophy.

The day before the Reformation, official Germany was the most abject
vassal of Rome. The day before its revolution, it is the abject vassal
of less than Rome, of Prussia and Austria, of country squires and
philistines.

Meanwhile there seems to be an important obstacle to a radical German
revolution.

Revolutions in fact require a passive element, a material foundation.

Theory becomes realized among a people only in so far as it represents
the realization of that people's needs. Will the immense cleavage
between the demands of the German intellect and the responses of
German actuality now involve a similar cleavage of middle-class
society from the State, and from itself? Will theoretical needs merge
directly into practical needs? It is not enough that the ideas press
towards realization; reality itself must stimulate to thinking.

But Germany did not pass through the middle stages of political
emancipation simultaneously with the modern nations. Even the stages
which she has overcome theoretically she has not reached practically.

How would she be able to clear with a _salto mortale_ not only her own
obstacles, but at the same time the obstacles of modern nations,
obstacles which she must actually feel to mean a liberation to be
striven for from her real obstacles? A radical revolution can only be
the revolution of radical needs, whose preliminary conditions appear
to be wholly lacking.

Although Germany has only accompanied the development of nations with
the abstract activity of thought, without taking an active part in the
real struggles incident to this development, she has, on the other
hand, shared in the suffering incident to this development, without
sharing in its enjoyments, or their partial satisfaction. Abstract
activity on the one side corresponds to abstract