ain, and break the
living flower.

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he thinks, acts,
shapes his reality like the disillusioned man come to his senses, so
that he revolves around himself, and thus around his real sun.
Religion is but the illusory sun which revolves around man, so long as
he does not revolve around himself.

It is therefore the task of history, once the _thither_ side of truth
has vanished, to establish the truth of the _hither_ side.

The immediate task of philosophy, when enlisted in the service of
history, is to unmask human self-alienation in its unholy shape, now
that it has been unmasked in its holy shape. Thus the criticism of
heaven transforms itself into the criticism of earth, the criticism of
religion into the criticism of right, and the criticism of theology
into the criticism of politics.

The following essay--a contribution to this work--is in the first
place joined not to the original, but to a copy, to the German
philosophy of politics and of right, for no other reason than because
it pertains to Germany.

If one should desire to strike a point of contact with the German
_status quo_, albeit in the only appropriate way, which is negatively,
the result would ever remain an anachronism. Even the denial of our
political present is already a dust-covered fact in the historical
lumber room of modern nations. If I deny the powdered wig, I still
have to deal with unpowdered wigs. If I deny the German conditions of
1843, I stand, according to French chronology, scarcely in the year
1789, let alone in the focus of the present.

German history flatters itself that it has a movement which no people
in the historical heaven have either executed before or will execute
after it. We have in point of fact shared in the restoration epoch of
modern nations without participating in their revolutions.

We were restored, in the first place, because other nations dared to
make a revolution, and, in the second place, because other nations
suffered a counter revolution: in the first place, because our
masters were afraid, and, in the second place, because they regained
their courage.

Led by our shepherds, we suddenly found ourselves in the society of
freedom on the day of its interment.

As a school which legitimates the baseness of to-day by the baseness
of yesterday, a school which explains every cry of the serf against
the knout as rebellious, once the knout becomes a prescripti