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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

As  regards  the  means  of  attaining  the  realization  of  that
social  transformation  of  which  he  dreamed,  Lassalle  completely ­
  separated  himself  from  Marx.  As  Dr.  Rudolf  Meyer
very  justly  observes,  Marx  considers  all  Europe,  Lassalle  sees
Germany  alone.  The  former  is  international  and  cosmopolitan,
the  latter  national  and  German.  Marx  held  that  no  social
reform  was  possible  in  an  isolated  state  ;  it  was  only  after  a
universal  revolution  had  overturned  every  throne  and  every
altar  that  equality  could  be  established.  Lassalle,  on  the  contrary, ­
  wished  to  introduce  reforms  peacefully  into  a  single  state,
to  serve  as  a  model  which  others  would  be  obliged  to  imitate.
This  State  was  to  be  United  Germany.  He  even  hoped,  like
the  physiocrats  of  the  eighteenth  century,  that  some  sovereign
or  some  great  minister  would  perceive  that  he  had  every  interest
in  gaining  the  affection  of  his  people,  by  bettering  their  condition. ­
  It  is  the  Utopia  of  Imperial  Socialism,  such  as  Louis
Napoleon  imagined  in  his  prison  of  Ham,  and  such  as,  they  say,
Prince  Bismarck  dreams  of  to-day.  Lassalle  held,  and  not  without ­
  reason,  that  a  bourgeois  republic  would  be  less  ready  than  a
monarc'hy  to  accept  radical  reforms,  since  such  reforms  would
necessarily  diminish  the  preponderance  of  the  leisured  classes,
while  they  might  increase  the  popularity  and  authority  of  the
sovereign.  Lassalle  was  a  clear-sighted  politician  with  a  keen
historical  sense.  As  early  as  1859  he  foresaw  and  hastened
by  his  wishes  the  struggle  between  Prussia  and  Austria,  and,
though  he  died  in  1864,  he  predicted  the  war  between  France
and  Germany.
He  was  by  no  means  an  obstinate  doctrinaire,  as  republicans
often  are.  He  understood  that  the  same  institutions,  even  if
republican,  could  not  be  equally  suitable  to  all  the  peoples  of
the  globe,  different  as  they  are  in  manners,  social  condition,
and  intellectual  development.  Fanatical  as  he  was  about  cooperation, ­
  he  believed  it  would  take  at  least  two  centuries—
Rodbertus  said  five—to  bring  about  the  complete  transformation ­
  of  society  and  the  suppression  of  the  system  of  working
for  wages.  It  was  not,  therefore,  by  means  of  any  violent
revolution  that  he  believed  his  projects  might  be  realized.
In  this  respect  he  separated  himself  completely  from  his