Page:Zelda Kahan - Karl Marx His Life And Teaching (1918).pdf/3

 because he was always ready for boyish pranks, and feared because he wrote cutting, satirical poetry and exposed his enemies to derision." All his life he remained passionately fond of poetry, art, and music. His favourite authors were Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Balzac, Schedrin and Pushkin. He was the personal friend of all the German revolutionary poets of the time, Heine, Freiligrath and Weehrt, and not only inspired many of their revolutionary poems, but often helped Heine whilst they were together in Paris to polish off lines, every word in a poem sometimes being discussed between them until all was smooth and polished. Marx knew about half a dozen languages, could write literary French and English like a native, and was, moreover, deeply interested in the progress of science. Liebknecht relates how excited he became when the first electric engine was exhibited in July, 1850. Engels also emphasises the joy Marx always felt when a new discover was made in any sphere of theoretical science, although, he adds, this was not equal to what he felt when such a discovery could at once be applied to industry and thus contribute to the development of society. When Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, and even before that, Marx at once recognised the epoch-making importance of Darwin's work, and for months in the circle of the German fugitives nothing was spoken of but Darwin.

We mention all this in order to show his universality and to refute the fairly prevalent idea that Marx was mere "dry-as-dust" economist. We shall speak later of his work, but we may here mention that whilst even Marx could not make the science of economics exactly easy, nevertheless even the more formal aspects of the subject are not treated in his work as drearily as by the older economists. whilst the historical sections of even "Capital" are so full of human sympathy and understanding, the illustrations are so apt, the sarcasm so natural and to the point, that no worker imbued with ordinary intelligence and a general elementary education need be afraid of tackling his works providing he has a certain power of concentration and determination to learn.