Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/467

 on the old, existing principle of the period which was then just closing; and just because it was reactionary, while it thought itself revolutionary, did the peasant uprising fail.

Accordingly, in comparison with the uprising of the peasants as well as that of the nobles under Franz von Sickingen—both of which had the principle in common of basing participation in the government, more definitely than had before been the case, upon landholding—the rising monarchical idea was relatively a justifiable and revolutionary factor, since it was based upon the idea of a state sovereignty independent of landholding, representing the national idea independent of private property relations; and it was just this which gave it the power for a victorious development and for the suppression of the uprising of the peasants and the nobles.

I have gone into this point somewhat explicitly, in the first place to show the reasonableness and the progress of liberty in the development of history, even by an example in which this is not at all evident on superficial observation; in the second place, because historians are still far from recognizing this reactionary character of the peasant uprising and the reason for its failure, which lay chiefly in this aspect; but, rather deceived by external appearances, they have considered the Peasant War a truly revolutionary movement.

Finally, in the third place, because at all ages this phenomenon is frequently repeated—that men who do not think clearly (among whom are often found those apparently most highly educated, even professors) have fallen into the tremendous mistake of taking for a new revolutionary principle what is only a more logical and clear expression of the thought of a period and of institutions which are just passing away.

Gentlemen, let me warn you against such men, who are revolutionists only in their own imaginations, and such tendencies, because we shall have them in the future as we