Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/27

Rh method which he had accepted from Hegel and applied with a sovereign mastery.

After young Marx had graduated with honors from the Trier Gymnasium, he matriculated at the University of Bonn. It was the fondest wish of his father, to see his son also a member of the legal profession—a wish, however, which was not to be realized. In Bonn he spent several terms without pursuing any definite studies, and in 1836 we find Marx at the University of Berlin. Here he was for the first time brought in contact with Hegel's philosophy and some prominent Young-Hegelians like Bruno Bauer, David Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., who befriended him. As his interest in these problems and studies grew, his nominal studies or "Brotstudium," as the Germans call the grind for an income, were sadly neglected and removed ever farther from the centre of his work and future plans and aspirations. However, as a dutiful son, he continued these studies, but without any great enthusiasm or success, and for the sole reason of avoiding a conflict with his father and to create a source of income for the future. He was also a passionate lover and bethrothed to Jenny von Westfalen, his slightly senior playmate and the prettiest and most refined damsel in Trier. When we peruse some of the youthful poems of Marx, we can about realize the consuming love which he cherished for his beloved, and also how anxiously he looked forward to their wedding day, and how gladly he would have presented a safe and sunny future as a wedding gift to his Jenny.

However, stronger than every other desire there burned in Marx a yearning for knowledge—a desire to know. With an insatiable thirst he entered upon the study of the various sciences, however, specializing in philosophy and history. He consulted scholarly treatises, contemporary life and closely dissected and questioned scientific systems. Overstudy and also the gruelling inner conflict between the feverish wish for clarity and the