FERDINAND LASS ALLE.*
To English readers Lassalle is chiefly known as " Alvan " in The Tragic Comedians, a strange, passionate figure who matches his will furiously against destiny. Professor Brandes in the present monograph—most of it appeared in. an English magazine as long ago as 1874, and, the book seems to have been issued in Germany in 1881—endeavoura to present the other sides of the man as scholar and democratic leader. Lassalle's career is a. genuine romance from his early championship of the Countess Hatafeldt to the duel on that August morning in the field near Geneva; but apart. from its personal interest it typifies a. spirit which has been potent in modern Germany. He was a true " Superman " in love with power. In a sense it is correct to say that he is the trait- d'unian between Hegel and Bismarck A Hegelian in philo- sophy, before the close of his short life he had become a friend of Bismarck, and had preached from a different standpoint the Chancellor's own gospel of "blood and iron."
Professor Brandes is an able but an irritating biographer. His Corinthian style is apt to obscure his very real critical power. The early chapters of the book seem to us muck too long and far too dithyrambic. No doubt Lassalle was a con- siderable scholar and legalist, and the work he did on. Tiered; Ina and on Roman Law shows a real vigour of intellect. But it may be fairly said that till be found his true miller as an agitator he was no better than a hundred egotistical young men of the age. We find him posing in Berlin drawing-rooms, a. good-looking young Jew, preposterously opinionated and vain. But when the lust for power drove him into political agitation he becomes a different being. The man's will was greater than his mind. He laboured incessantly, speaking, writ- ing, and organizing; he had the whole world against him, and rejoiced. in the battle. He summoned mankind to look at facts and revise their definitions. Like a true Hegelian, he saw all history as the product of certain ideas, and this led him into the economico-historic dogmatism which is the main feature of the system of Marx and Engels. "The secret of the fruitfulness of capital is seen to consist in the unfruitfulness of labour," as Professor Brandes neatly put. it. Ms principles are Socialism of the older-fashioned type; but it is noteworthy that when he came to apply them he showed a true political instinct. The man was a leader and an administrator more than a theorist. As against the school..
• Ferdinand Lamalla. By George Brandes. London : W. Heinemann. L6a.3
of Bastiat and Schultze-De]itzsch, who made an idol of " self- help," be preached a moderate "State help.", He wanted productive unions of workers supported by State credit— voluntary unions, much as we see among Danish small holders to-day. No doubt his aim was an ultimate abolition of landed and capitalist property; but his nature was so mobile that it is impossible to say how he might have developed. The doctrinaire Socialists like Rodbertus looked askance at him, and many openly proclaimed that be was in the service of the reaction. He wanted to make the workers a power— and himself as their leader a greater—and for this purpose he would use any alliance. He had none of Marx's inter- nationalism, and at his death looked to Bismarck as the man born to transform social conditions. Who shall say how much the maker of the new Germany borrowed from this fiery voluntary?
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