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  magician’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