Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/33

 was to be. Although not yet a Socialist, he is already sufficiently interested in Socialism to make its origins in Germany the subject of his work. In this historical examination he refers German Socialism back to the teachings of Luther, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, and refuses the idea that modern Socialism is a result of purely economic developments. This was characteristic of Jaurès, for though be believed in the reality of the world of sense, it was always the underlying spiritual idea which interested him and seemed to him important. The spirit was that which united all things, and in his philosophical essay he developed this great idea of Unity. Unity and the Interpenetrability of things, were the mental keynotes from which resulted all his ideas and acts, for Jaurès had a most harmonious nature and mind. In his philosophy Life was a whole, and the course of history a real development, so that he did not believe in cataclysms, and Socialism became to him simply a necessary result of all that had gone before. So, too, we find him always seeking the point of contact, even with those opposed to him in many things, for he believed in contact, in comprehension of others, even in submitting to them at times. He believed in the power all things have of penetrating each other and of deriving good from this communion—man penetrating and being penetrated by Nature, and human beings