Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/555

 mastery of the working class over the other classes of society the end of their endeavors, to be pursued with the most ardent and consuming passion."

This is the only passage in the document that is of the nature of a legal motivation. Let us look more closely into this sentence. This is a sentence which might give the asthma to a person with weak lungs, and it is so constructed as to hide its total lack of substance from any superficial view under a shimmering verbiage and a confusion of ideas. If you will look more closely into this passage, Gentlemen, you will be astonished at the quantity of juristic monstrosities, absurdities, misstatements and misconstructions of fact which it contains.

Now, whereby, according to this passage, have I accomplished my alleged incitement to hatred and contempt? "By these expositions," says the document. That is to say by a purely theoretical, purely objective exposition of historical events; by what the indictment itself designates as the exposition of my leading ideas; by nothing else, therefore, than the scientific doctrine simply. It is by this means that I am alleged to have incited to hatred and contempt. The indictment may shift and turn as it likes; it cannot escape the avowal that its accusation runs against nothing else than purely scientific arguments,—against science and its teaching.

But the passage goes on to add an "and." By these expositions and by the frequently recurring allusions to an imminent social revolution is the instigation alleged to have been effected.

What are these allusions to an imminent social revolution? Where are they to be found? Why does not the public prosecutor cite them? I call upon him to do so. But he cannot cite them. There is no passage in this pamphlet which will bear out his insinuations on this point.

It is true, throughout this pamphlet I make frequent use of the words "revolutionary" and "revolution;" although I do not speak of an "imminent social revolution," as the