Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/543

 But, more than all this, I go on to show that the dominance of the idea of the bourgeoisie is a great historic move in the liberation of humanity; that it was a most potent moral cultural advance; that in fact it was the historically indispensable prerequisite and transitional stage through development out of which the idea of the working class was to emerge.

I therefore must be said to reconcile the working class to the dominance of the bourgeoisie as an historical fact by showing the logical necessity of this dominance. I reconcile them to it, for a comprehension of the rationality of what restricts us is the fullest possible reconciliation to it.

And if I proceed, further, to show that the idea of the bourgeoisie is not the highest stage of the historical development, not the perfect flower of advancing improvement, but that beyond it lies yet a higher manifestation of the human spirit, and that this ulterior phase rests on the former as its base—does this mean that I incite to hatred and contempt of the former?

The working class might as well hate and despise themselves and all human nature, whether in their own or in their neighbors' persons, because it is the law of human nature to unfold step by step and to proceed to each succeeding stage of development from the indispensable vantage ground of the phase preceding.

If I had any predilection for homiletical discourse, Gentlemen, I should be quite justified in saying that I have exhorted the working classes to a filial piety toward the bourgeoisie, in that I have shown that the dominance of the bourgeoisie was the indispensable prerequisite and condition by transition out of which alone the idea of the working class could come forth. For even if the son, by grace of a freer and fuller education and a larger endowment of personal force, strives to place himself above the level on which his father stood, still he never forgets the source of his own blood and the author of his own being.