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26 duty endangered his health. The future was also beclouded by a threatening conflict with his father. An early death of Heinrich Marx, however, saved Marx from these ungratifying scenes. The youth remained steadfast in his determination. With tenacious perseverance, he devoted himself to his purposes and aims in life; he battled bravely with the sciences; toiled endlessly and unceasingly to achieve results; and he was rewarded for his untiring efforts, not over night mind you, but after many years of profound and conscientious research. Craving for knowledge and desirous of doing things, Marx, as a disciple of Hegel, delved through history, and particularly the history of his time, in search for the absolute idea: the idea that governs and propels everything in life. He desired to study the manifestations of this force in the intellectual progress of the people, in the form and institutions of social life; he desired to vision direction and aim of its effect clearly, in order to be able to serve evolution conscientiously. However, this process of self-enlightenment netted him at first, outside of a few fruitful doubts, only some starting points to his later conception of history. Only after years he found, instead of the absolute idea, the real driving power behind social development; he found the force that has shaped, determined and influenced ideas in history ever since the day society was organized upon private-property, namely: the class-struggles, which again are unchained and have their origin and aim in the conditions of production and exchange prevailing in a community at a certain historic period.

Before he was able to arrive at above conclusions, before he could formulate his findings into a clear and scientific theory, conditions compelled him to discontinue his studies, and with a dissertation on the "Philosophy of Epicure" he graduated, although not present, from the University of Jena in 1841, receiving the degree of doctor of philosophy. He had hoped and harbored the fond ambition to serve the cause of intellectual freedom, by becoming a lecturer at one of the German universities, but the