FERDINAND LASSALLE. 
79 
pet heroes, the men of the French revolution. Hegel had 
taught him the theory of organic evolution, and of those 
successive “ moments ” through which the historical “ process ” 
must pass. He had a lively sympathy for Prince Bismarck, 
who was, in fact, soon going to execute his political programme 
by founding German unity upon the humiliation of Austria, and 
by introducing direct universal suffrage for the elections to the 
central parliament Some time before his death, in 1864, he 
endeavoured to see him, and he even made his partisans vote 
in favour of the man who as yet only represented the principle 
of monarchical authority, founded upon a Spartan military 
system which embraced the entire nation. 
Up to the present his dream has not been realized. Prince 
Bismarck has approached Socialism, but he has not yet put 
down the principle of wages. Lassalle understood, better than 
those Socialists from whom he borrowed his plans of reform, 
that society cannot be transformed with the stroke of a magi 
cian’s wand ; nevertheless, he expected too much from the 
initiative of the State. The essential truth, which must be 
repeated to the working classes, and which is slowly penetrating 
them, is, that changes in the organization of society never are 
and never will be accomplished otherwise than slowly, and that 
it is impossible to achieve a social revolution by decrees in the 
same way as a political revolution. Give to Karl Marx or to 
Lassalle full power to dispose of the land, the capital, and all 
the wealth of the country at their pleasure, and to make them 
“ collective property,” yet the corporations of working men or 
the social factories to whom the instruments of labour would be 
entrusted, would not be capable of organizing and directing 
production. Even picked working men succeed only very 
exceptionally in making co-operative productive associations 
prosperous, while they always fail when the working men do 
not themselves form their own capital. No doubt those 
economists are mistaken who imagine that the laws which now 
govern economic facts are immutable, because they are natural 
laws. History and geography demonstrate that human societies 
have lived and still live under conditions very different and very 
variable. Humanity has probably not reached the final end