The Holy Family
2) Revelation of The Mystery of Critical Religion, Or Fleur De Marie
[" Fleur de Marie “ is translated by the authors into German as “ Marien-Blume “ which means Marguerite ]
a) The Speculative “Marguerite"'
A word more about Herr Szeliga’s speculative “Marguerite“ before we go on to Eugène Sue’s Fleur de Marie.
The speculative “Marguerite“ is above all a correction . The fact is that the reader could conclude from Herr Szeliga’s construction that Eugène Sue had
“separated the presentation of the objective basis“ (of the “world system“) “from the development of the acting individual forces which can he understood only against that background“.
Besides the task of correcting this erroneous conjecture that the reader may have made from Herr Szeliga’s presentation, Marguerite has also a metaphysical mission in our, or rather Herr Szeliga’s, “epic“.
“The world system and an epic event would still not be artistically united in a really single whole if they were only interspersed in a motley mixture — now here a bit of world system and then there some stage play. If real unity is to result, both things. the mysteries of this prejudiced world and the clarity, frankness and confidence with which Rudolph penetrates and reveals them, must clash in a single individual ... This is the task of Marguerite.“
Herr Szeliga speculatively constructs Marguerite by analogy with Bauer’s construction of the Mother of God.
On one side is the “ divine element “ ( Rudolph ) to, which “all power and freedom“ are attributed, the only active principle. On the other side is the passive “ world system “ and the human beings belonging to it. The world system is the “ground of reality“. If this ground is not to be “entirely abandoned“ or “the last remnant of the natural condition is not to be abolished“; if the world itself is to have some share in the “principle of development“ that Rudolph, in contrast to the world, concentrates in himself; if “the human element is not to be represented simply as unfree and inactive“, Herr Szeliga is bound to fall into the “contradiction of religious consciousness“. Although he tears apart the world system and its activity as the dualism of a dead Mass and Criticism (Rudolph), he is nevertheless obliged to concede some attributes of divinity to the world system and the mass and to give in Marguerite a speculative construction of the unity of the two, Rudolph and the world (see Kritik der Synoptiker , Band 1, p. 39).
Besides the real relations of the house-owner , the acting “individual force“, to his house (the “objective basis“), mystical speculation, and speculative aesthetics too, need a third concrete, speculative unity , a Subject-Object which is the house and the house-owner in one . As speculation does not like natural mediations in their extensive circumstantiality, it does not realise that the same “bit of world system“, the house, for example, which for one, the house-owner, for example, is an “objective basis“, is for the other, the builder of the house, an “epic event“. In order to get a “really single whole“ and “real unity"’ Critical Criticism, which reproaches “romantic art“ with the “dogma of unity“, replaces the natural and human connection between the world system and world events by a fantastic connection, a mystical Subject-Object, just as Hegel replaces the real connection between man and nature by an absolute Subject-Object which is at one and the same time the whole of nature and the whole of humanity, the Absolute Spirit .
In the Critical Marguerite “the universal guilt of the time, the guilt of mystery“, becomes the “ mystery of guilt “, just as the universal debt [a pun on the word “Schuld“ which means “guilt“ and “debt"] of mystery becomes the mystery of debts in the indebted Epicier [grocer] .
According to the Mother-of-God construction, Marguerite should really have been the mother of Rudolph , the redeemer of the world. Herr Szeliga expressly says:
“According to the logical sequence, Rudolph should have been the son of Marguerite.“
Since, however, he is not her son, but her father, Herr Szeliga finds in this “the new mystery that the present often bears in its womb the long departed past instead of the future“. He even reveals another mystery, a still greater one, a mystery which directly contradicts mass-type statistics, the mystery that
“a child, if it does not, in its turn, become a father or mother, but goes to its grave pure and innocent, is ... essentially ... a daughter “.
Herr Szeliga faithfully follows Hegel’s speculation when, according to the “ logical sequence“, he regards the daughter as the mother of her father. In Hegel’s philosophy of history, as in his philosophy of nature, the son engenders the mother, the spirit nature, the Christian religion paganism, the result the beginning.
After proving that according to the “ logical sequence “ Marguerite ought to have been Rudolph’s mother, Herr Szeliga proves the opposite:
“in order to conform fully to the idea she embodies in our epic, she must never become a mother “.
This shows at least that the idea of our epic and Herr Szeliga’s logical sequence are mutually contradictory.
The speculative Marguerite is nothing but the “ embodiment of an idea “. But what idea?
“She has the task of representing, as it were , the last tear of grief that the past sheds prior to its final passing away.“
She is the representation of an allegorical tear, and even this little that she is, is only “ as it were “.
We shall not follow Herr Szeliga in his further description of Marguerite. We shall leave her the satisfaction, according to Herr Szeliga’s prescription, of “constituting the most decisive antithesis to everyone “, a mysterious antithesis, as mysterious as the attributes of God.
Neither shall we delve into the “ true mystery “ that is “deposited by God in the breast of man“ and at which the speculative Marguerite “as it were“ hints. We shall pass from Herr Szeliga’s Marguerite to Eugène Sue’s Fleur de Marie and to the Critical miraculous cures Rudolph accomplishes on her.
b) Fleur de Marie
We meet Marie surrounded by criminals, as a prostitute in bondage to the proprietress of the criminals’ tavern. In this debasement she preserves a human nobleness of soul, a human unaffectedness and a human beauty that impress those around her, raise her to the level of a poetical flower of the criminal world and win for her the name of Fleur de Marie.
We must observe Fleur de Marie attentively from her first appearance in order to be able to compare her original form with her Critical transformation .
In spite of her frailty, Fleur de Marie at once gives proof of vitality, energy, cheerfulness, resilience of character — qualities which alone explain her human development in her inhuman situation.
When Chourineur ill-treats her, she defends herself with her scissors. That is the situation in which we first find her. She does not appear as a defenceless lamb who surrenders without any resistance to overwhelming brutality; she is a girl who can vindicate her rights and put up a fight.
In the criminals’ tavern in the Rue aux Fèves she tells Chourineur and Rudolph the story of her life. As she does so she laughs at Chourineur’s wit. She blames herself because on being released from prison she spent the 300 francs she had earned there on amusements instead of looking for work. “But,“ she said, “I had no one to advise me.“ The memory of the catastrophe of her life — her selling herself to the proprietress of the criminals’ tavern — puts her in a melancholy mood. It is the first time since her childhood that she has recalled these events.
“Le fait est, que ça me chagrine de regarder ainsi derrière moi ... a doit être bien bon d'être honnête." [The fact is that it grieves me when I look back in this way ... it must he lovely to be honest]
When Chourineur makes fun of her and tells her she must become honest, she exclaims:
“Honnête, mon dieu! et avec quoi donc veux-tu que je sois honnête?" [Honest! My God! What do you want me to be honest with?]
She insists that she is not one “to have fits of tears": “ Je ne suis pas pleurnicheuse “ [I am no cry-baby] ; but her position in life is sad — “ Ça nest pas gai. “ [It isn’t a happy one] Finally, contrary to Christian repentance , she pronounces on the past the human sentence, at once Stoic and Epicurean, of a free and strong nature:
Enfin ce qui est fait, est fait." [Well, what is done is done]
Let us accompany Fleur de Marie on her first outing with Rudolph.
“The consciousness of your terrible situation has probably often distressed you,“ Rudolph says, itching to moralise.
The Holy Family Chapter VIII
3) Revelation of the Mysteries of Law
a) The maître d'école, or the New Penal Theory. The Mystery of Solitary Confinement Revealed. Medical Mysteries
The maître d'école is a criminal of Herculean strength and great intellectual vigour. He was brought up an educated and well-schooled man. This passionate athlete comes into conflict with the laws and customs of bourgeois society, whose universal yardstick is mediocrity, delicate morals and quiet trade. He becomes a murderer and abandons himself to all the excesses of a violent temperament that can nowhere find a fitting human occupation.
Rudolph captures this criminal. He wants to reform him critically and set him up as an example for the world of law. He quarrels with the world of law not over “ punishment “ itself, but over kinds and methods of punishment. He invents, as the Negro doctor David aptly expresses it, a penal theory which would be worthy of the “ greatest German criminal expert “, and which has since had the good fortune to be defended by a German criminal expert with German earnestness and German thoroughness. Rudolph has not the slightest idea that one can rise above criminal experts: his ambition is to be “the greatest criminal expert“, primus inter pares [first among equals] . He has the maître d'école blinded by the Negro doctor David.
At first Rudolph repeats all the trivial objections to capital punishment: that it has no effect on the criminal and no effect on the people, for whom it seems to be an entertaining spectacle.
Further Rudolph establishes a difference between the maître d'école and the soul of the maître d'école. It is not the man, not the real maître d'école whom he wishes to save; he wants the spiritual salvation of his soul.
“The salvation of a soul,“ he teaches, “is something holy.... Every crime can be atoned for and redeemed, the Saviour said, but only if the criminal earnestly desires to repent and atone . The transition from the court to the scaffold is too short.... You“ (the maître d'école ) “have criminally misused your strength . I shall paralyse your strength ... you will tremble before the weakest, your punishment will be equal to your crime ... but this terrible punishment will at least leave you the boundless horizon of atonement .... I shall cut you off only from the outer world in order to plunge you into impenetrable night and leave you alone with the memory of your ignominious deeds.... You will be forced to look into yourself ... your intelligence, which you have degraded, will be roused and will lead you to atonement.“
Since Rudolph regards the soul as holy and man’s body as profane , since he thus considers only the soul to be the true essence, because — according to Herr Szeliga’s Critical description of humanity — it belongs to heaven, the body and the strength of the maître d'école do not belong to humanity, the manifestation of their essence cannot be given human form or claimed for humanity and cannot be treated as essentially human. The maître d'école has misused his strength; Rudolph paralyses, lames, destroys that strength. There is no more Critical means of getting rid of the perverse manifestations of a human essential strength than the destruction of this essential strength. This is the Christian means — plucking out the eye if it offends or cutting off the hand if it offends, in a word, killing the body if the body gives offence; for the eye, the hand, the body are really only superfluous sinful appendages of man. Human nature must be killed in order to heal its ailments. Mass-type jurisprudence, too, in agreement here with the Critical, sees in the laming and paralysing of human strength the antidote to the objectionable manifestations of that strength.
What Rudolph, the man of pure Criticism, objects to in profane criminal justice is the too swift transition from the court to the scaffold. He, on the other hand, wants to link vengeance on the criminal with penance and consciousness of sin in the criminal, corporal punishment with spiritual punishment, sensuous torture with the non-sensuous torture of remorse. Profane punishment must at the same time be a means of Christian moral education,
This penal theory, which links jurisprudence with theology , this “revealed mystery of the mystery“, is no other than the penal theory of the Catholic Church, as already expounded at length by Bentham in his work Punishments and Rewards [Théorie des peines et des récompenses] In that book Bentham also proved the moral futility of the punishments of today. He calls legal penalties “ legal parodies “.
The punishment that Rudolph imposed on the maître d'école is the same as that which Origen imposed on himself. He emasculates him, robs him of a productive organ , the eye. “The eye is the light of the body.“ [New Testament, Matthew, 6:22] It does great credit to Rudolph’s religious instinct that he should hit, of all things, upon the idea of blinding . This punishment was current in the thoroughly Christian empire of Byzantium and came to full flower in the vigorous youthful period of the Christian-Germanic states of England and France. Cutting man off from the perceptible outer world, throwing him back into his abstract inner nature in order to correct him — blinding — is a necessary consequence of the Christian doctrine according to which the consummation of this cutting off, the pure isolation of man in his spiritualistic “ ego “, is good itself. If Rudolph does not shut the maître d'école up in a real monastery, as was the case in Byzantium and in Franconia, he at least shuts him up in an ideal monastery, in the cloister of an impenetrable night which the light of the outer world cannot pierce, the cloister of an idle conscience and consciousness of sin filled with nothing but the phantoms of memory.
A certain speculative bashfulness prevents Herr Szeliga from discussing openly the penal theory of his hero Rudolph that worldly punishment must be linked with Christian repentance and atonement. Instead he imputes to him — naturally as a mystery which is only just being revealed to the world — the theory that punishment must make the criminal the “ judge “ of his “ own “ crime.
The mystery of this revealed mystery is Hegel’s penal theory. According to Hegel, the criminal in his punishment passes sentence on himself. Gans developed this theory at greater length. In Hegel this is the speculative disguise of the old jus talionis [the right of retaliation-an eye for an eye] , which Kant expounded as the only juridical penal theory. For Hegel, self-judgment of the criminal remains a mere “ Idea “, a mere speculative interpretation of the current empirical punishments for criminals. He thus leaves the mode of application to the respective stage of development of the state, i.e., he leaves punishment as it is. Precisely in that he shows himself more critical than his Critical echo. A penal theory which at the same time sees in the criminal the man can do so only in abstraction , in imagination, precisely because punishment , coercion , is contrary to human conduct. Moreover, this would be impossible to carry out. Purely subjective arbitrariness would take the place of the abstract law because it would always depend on the official, “honourable and decent“ men to adapt the penalty to the individuality of the criminal. Plato long ago realised that the law must be one-sided and take no account of the individual. On the other hand, under human conditions punishment will really be nothing but the sentence passed by the culprit on himself. No one will want to convince him that violence from without , done to him by others, is violence which he had done to himself. On the contrary, he will see in other men his natural saviours from the punishment which he has imposed on himself; in other words, the relation will be reversed.
Rudolph expresses his innermost thought — the purpose of blinding the maître d'école — when he says to him:
“ Chacune de tu paroles sera une prière ." [every word you say will be a prayer]
He wants to teach him to pray . He wants to convert the Herculean robber into a monk whose only work is prayer. Compared with this Christian cruelty, how humane is the ordinary penal theory that just chops a man’s head off when it wants to destroy him. Finally, it goes without saying that whenever real mass-type legislation was seriously concerned with improving the criminal it acted incomparably more sensibly and humanely than the German Harun al-Rashid. The four Dutch agricultural colonies and the Ostwald penal colony in Alsace are truly human attempts in comparison with the blinding of the maître d'école just as Rudolph kills Fleur de Marie by handing her over to the priest and consciousness of sin, just as he kills Chourineur by robbing him of his human independence and degrading him into a bulldog, so he kills the maître d'école by having his eyes gouged out in order that he can learn to “ pray “.
This is, of course, the way in which all reality emerges “ simply “ out of “ pure Criticism “, namely, as a distortion and senseless abstraction of reality.
Immediately after the blinding of the maître d'école Herr Szeliga causes a moral miracle to take place.
“The terrible maître d'école, “ he reports, “ suddenly recognises the power of honesty and decency and says to Schurimann: ‘ Yes, I can trust you, you have never stolen anything. “
Unfortunately Eugène Sue recorded a statement of the maître d'école about Chourineur which contains the same recognition and cannot he the effect of his having been blinded, since it was made earlier. In talking to Rudolph alone, the maître d'école said about Chourineur:
“Besides, he is not capable of betraying a friend. No, there’s something good in him ... he has always had strange ideas.“
This would seem to do away with Herr Szeliga’s moral miracle. Now we shall see the real results of Rudolph’s Critical cure.
We next meet the maître d'école as he is going with a woman called Chouette to Bouqueval farm to play a foul trick on Fleur de Marie. The thought that dominates him is, of course, the thought of revenge on Rudolph. But the only way he knows of wreaking vengeance on him is metaphysically, by thinking and hatching “ evil “ to spite him.
“ He has taken away my sight but not the thought of evil .“
He tells Chouette why he had sent for her:
“I was bored all alone with those honest people.“
When Eugène Sue satisfies his monkish, bestial lust in the self-humiliation of man to the extent of making the maître d'école implore on his knees the old hag Chouette and the little imp Tortillard not to abandon him, the great moralist forgets that that is the height of diabolical satisfaction for Chouette. Just as Rudolph, precisely by the violent act of blinding the criminal, proved to him the power of physical force, which he wants to show him is insignificant, so Eugène Sue now teaches the maître d'école really to recognise the full power of the senses. He teaches him to understand that without it man is unmanned and becomes a helpless object of mockery for children. He convinces him that the world deserved his crimes, for he had only to lose his sight to be ill-treated by it. He robs him of his last human illusion, for so far the maître d'école believed in Chouette’s attachment to him. He had said to Rudolph: “She would let herself be thrown into the fire for me.“ Eugène Sue, on the other hand, has the satisfaction of hearing the maître d'école cry out in the depths of despair:
“ Mon dieu! Mon dieu! Mon dieu! “
He has learnt to “ pray "! In this “appel involontaire de la commisération divine,“ Eugène Sue sees “ quelque chose de providentiel“. [spontaneous appeal for divine mercy ... something providential]
The Holy Family Chapter VIII
4) The Revealed Mystery of The “Standpoint“
“Rudolph does not remain at his lofty“ (!) .. standpoint ... he does not shirk the trouble of adopting by free choice the standpoints on the right and on the left, above and below“ ( Szeliga ).
One of the principal mysteries of Critical Criticism is the “ standpoint “ and judgment from the standpoint of the standpoint . For Criticism every man, like every product of the spirit, is turned into a standpoint.
Nothing is easier than to see through the mystery of the standpoint when one has seen through the general mystery of Critical Criticism, that of warming up old speculative trash.
First of all, let Criticism itself expound its theory of the “standpoint“ in the words of its patriarch, Herr Bruno Bauer .
“Science ... never deals with a given single individual or a given definite standpoint ... it will not fail, of course, to do away with the limitations of a standpoint if it is worth the trouble and if these limitations have really general human significance; but it conceives them as pure category and determinations of selfconsciousness and accordingly speaks only for those who have the courage to rise to the generality of self-consciousness, i.e., who do not wish with all their strength to remain within those limitations“ ( Anekdota , t. II, p. 127). [B. Bauer, Leiden und Freuden des theologischen Bewusstseins]
The Holy Family Chapter VIII
5) Revelation of The Mystery of the Utilisation of Human Impulses, Or Clémence D'Harville
So far Rudolph has been unable to do more than reward the good and punish the wicked in his own way. We shall now see an example of how he makes the passions useful and “gives the good natural disposition of Clémence d'Harville an appropriate development“.
“Rudolph,“ says Herr Szeliga, “draws her attention to the entertaining aspect of charity, a thought which testifies to a knowledge of human beings that can only arise in the soul of Rudolph after it has been through trial.“
The expressions which Rudolph uses in his conversation with Clémence:
“To make attractive“, “to utilise natural taste “, “to regulate intrigue“, “to utilise the propensity to dissimulation and craft“, “to change imperious, inexorable instincts into noble qualities“ etc.,
these expressions just as ‘ much as the impulses themselves, which are mostly attributed here to woman’s nature, betray the secret source of Rudolph’s wisdom — Fourier . He has come across some popular presentation of Fourier’s theory.
The application is again just as much Rudolph’s Critical own as is the exposition of Bentham’s theory given above.
The Holy Family Chapter VIII
6) Revelation of the Mystery of the Emancipation of Women, Or Louise Morel
On the occasion of the arrest of Louise Morel , Rudolph indulges in reflections which he sums up as follows:
“The master often ruins the maid, either by fear, surprise or other use of the opportunities provided by the nature of the servants’ condition . He reduces her to misery, shame and crime. The law is not concerned with this.... The criminal who has in fact driven a girl to infanticide is not punished .“
Rudolph’s reflections do not go so far as to make the servants’ condition the object of his most gracious Criticism. Being a petty rulers he is a great patroniser of servants’ conditions. Still less does he go so far as to understand that the general position of women in modern society is inhuman. Faithful in all respects to his previous theory, he deplores only that there is no law which punishes a seducer and links repentance and atonement with terrible chastisement.
Rudolph has only to take a look at the existing legislation in other countries. English laws fulfil all his wishes. In their delicacy, which Blackstone so highly praises, they go so far as to declare it a felony to seduce even a prostitute.
Herr Szeliga exclaims with a flourish :
The Holy Family Chapter VIII
7) Revelation of Political Economic Mysteries
a) Theoretical Revelation of Political Economic Mysteries
First revelation: Wealth often leads to waste, waste to ruin.
Second revelation : The above-mentioned effects of wealth arise from a lack of instruction in rich youth.
Third revelation : Inheritance and private property are and must be inviolable and sacred.
Fourth revelation : The rich man is morally responsible to the workers for the way he uses his fortune. A large fortune is a hereditary deposit — a feudal tenement — entrusted to clever, firm, skilful and magnanimous hands, which are at the same time charged with making it fruitful and using it in such a way that everything which has the good luck to be within the range of the dazzling and wholesome radiation of that large fortune is fructified, vitalised and improved.
Fifth revelation : The state must give inexperienced rich youth the rudiments of individual economy . It must give a moral character to riches.
Sixth revelation : Finally, the state must tackle the vast question of organisation of labour . It must give the wholesome example of the association of capitals and labour , of an association which is honest, intelligent and fair, which ensures the well-being of the worker without prejudice to the fortune of the rich , which establishes links of sympathy and gratitude between these two classes and thus ensures tranquillity in the state for ever .
Since the state at present does not yet accept this theory Rudolph himself gives some practical examples. They reveal the mystery that the most generally known economic relations are still ..mysteries“ for Monsieur Sue, Monsieur Rudolph and Critical Criticism.
b) “The Bank for the Poor“
Rudolph institutes a Bank for the Poor . The statute of this Critical Bank for the Poor is as follows:
It must give support during periods of unemployment to honest workers with families. It must replace alms and pawnshops. It has at its disposal an annual income of 12,000 francs and distributes interest-free assistance loans of 20 to 40 francs. At first it extends its activity only to the seventh arrondissement of Paris, where most of the workers live. Working men and women applying for relief must have a certificate from their last employer vouching for their good behaviour and giving the cause and date of the interruption of work. These loans are to be paid off in monthly instalments of one-sixth or one-twelfth of the sum at the choice of the borrower, counting from the day on which he finds employment again. The loan is guaranteed by a the borrower’s word of honour. Moreover, the latter’s parole jurée [sworn sword] must be guaranteed by two other workers.
As the Critical purpose of the Bank for the Poor is to remedy one of the most grievous misfortunes in the life of the worker — interruption in employment — assistance would be given only to unemployed manual workers. Monsieur Germain, the manager of this institution, draws a yearly salary of 10,000 francs.
The Holy Family Chapter VIII
8) Rudolph, “The Revealed Mystery of All Mysteries“
The miraculous means by which Rudolph accomplishes all his redemptions and miracle cures is not his fine words but his ready money . That is what the moralists are like, says Fourier. You must be a millionaire to he able to imitate their heroes.
Moral is “ impotence in action “ [50] . Every time it fights a vice it is defeated. And Rudolph does not even rise to the standpoint of independent morality, which is based at least on the consciousness of human dignity . His morality, on the contrary, is based on the consciousness of human weakness. His is the theological morality. We have investigated in detail the heroic feats that he accomplished with his fixed, Christian ideas, by which he measures the world, with his “ charité “, “ dévouement “, “ abnégation “, “ repentir “, “ bons “ and “ méchants “, “ récompense “ and “ punition “, “ châtiments terribles “, “ isolement “, “ salut de l'âme “ [charity, devotion, self-denial, repentance“, the good and the wicked people, reward and punishment, terrible chastisements, isolation, salvation of the soul] etc. We have proved that they are mere Eulenspiegel tricks. All that we still have to deal with here is the personal character of Rudolph, the “revealed mystery of all mysteries“ or the revealed mystery of “ pure Criticism“.
The antithesis of “good“ and “evil“ confronts the Critical Hercules when he is still a youth in two personifications, Murph and Polidori , both of them Rudolph’s teachers. The former educates him in good and is “the Good One “. The latter educates him in evil and is “the Evil One “. So that this conception should by no means be inferior in triviality to similar conceptions in other novels, Murph, the personification of “ the good “, cannot be “ savant “ or “particularly endowed intellectually“. But he is honest , simple , and laconic ; he feels himself great when he applies to evil such monosyllabic words as “ foul “ or “ vile “, and he has a horreur of anything which is base. To use Hegel’s expression, he honestly sets the melody of the good and the true in an equality of tones, i.e., on one note.
Polidori , on the contrary, is a prodigy of cleverness, knowledge and education, and at the same time of the “most dangerous immorality“, having, in particular, what Eugène Sue, as a member of the young pious French bourgeoisie, could not forget — “ Le plus effrayant scepticisme “ [the most frightful scepticism] . We can judge the spiritual energy and education of Eugène Sue and his hero by their panic fear of scepticism.
Murph,“ says Herr Szeliga, “is at the same time the perpetuated guilt of January 13 [On this day, Rudolph, in a fit of anger, made an attempt on the life of his father, but repented and gave the word to do good] and the perpetual redemption of that guilt by his incomparable love and self-sacrifice for the person of Rudolph.“
Just as Rudolph is the deus ex machina and the mediator of the world, so Murph, for his part, is the personal deus ex machina and mediator of Rudolph.
“Rudolph and the salvation of mankind, Rudolph and the realisation of man’s essential perfections, are for Murph an inseparable unity, a unity to which he dedicates himself not with the stupid dog-like devotion of the slave, but knowingly and independently.“
So Murph is an enlightened, knowing and independent slave. Like every prince’s valet, he sees in his master the salvation of mankind personified. Graun flatters Murph with the words: “ intrépide garde du corps “ [fearless bodyguard] . Rudolph himself calls him modèle d'un valet [model servant] and truly he is a model servant . Eugène Sue tells us that Murph scrupulously addresses Rudolph as “Monseigneur“ when alone with him. In the presence of others he calls him Monsieur with his lips to keep his incognito, but “Monseigneur“ with his heart.
“Murph helps to raise the veil from the mysteries, but only for Rudolph’s sake. He helps in the work of destroying the power of mystery.“
The denseness of the veil which conceals the simplest conditions of the world from Murph can be seen from his conversation with the envoy Graun. From the legal right of self-defence in case of emergency he concludes that Rudolph, as judge of the secret court , was entitled to blind the maître d'école , although the latter was in chains and “defenceless“. His description of how Rudolph will tell of his “noble“ actions before the assizes, will make a display of eloquent phrases, and will let his great heart pour forth, is worthy of a grammar-school boy who has just read Schiller’s Raüber . The only mystery which Murph lets the world solve is whether he blacked his face with coal-dust or black paint when he played the charbonnier [coal man] .
“The angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just“ (Mat. 13:49). “Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil ... ; But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good“ (Rom. 2:9-10).
Rudolph makes himself one of those angels . He goes forth into the world to sever the wicked from among the just, to punish the wicked and reward the good. The conception of good and evil has sunk so deep into his weak brain that he really believes in a corporeal Satan and wants to catch the devil alive, as at one time Professor Sack wanted to in Bonn. On the other hand, he tries to copy on a small scale the opposite of the devil, God . He likes “ de jouer un peu le rôle de la providence “ [to play the role of Providence a little]. Just as in reality all differences become merged more and more in the difference between poor and rich , so all aristocratic differences become dissolved in idea in the opposition between good and evil . This distinction is the last form that the aristocrat gives to his prejudices. Rudolph regards himself as a good man and thinks that the wicked exist to afford him the self-satisfaction of his own ‘ excellence. Let us consider this personification of “the good“ a little more closely.
Herr Rudolph indulges in charity and extravagance like the Caliph of Baghdad in the Arabian Nights. He cannot possibly lead that kind of life without sucking the blood out of his little principality in Germany to the last drop like a vampire. As Monsieur Sue tells us, he would have been among the German princes who were victims of mediation [51] had he not been saved from involuntary abdication by the protection of a French marquis . This gives us an idea of the size of his territory. We can form a further idea of how Critically Rudolph appraises his own situation by the fact that he, a minor German Serenissimus , thinks it necessary to live semi-incognito in Paris in order not to attract attention. He specially takes with him one of his chancellors for the Critical purpose of the latter representing for him “ le côté théâtral et puéril du pouvoir souverain “ [the theatrical and childish side of sovereign power] , as though a minor German Serenissimus needed another representative of the theatrical and childish side of sovereign power besides himself and his mirror. Rudolph has succeeded in imposing on his suite the same Critical self-delusion . Thus his servant Murph and his envoy Graun do not notice that the Parisian homme d'affaires [household manager] , Monsieur Badinot , makes fun of them when he pretends to take their private instructions as matters of state and sarcastically chatters about
The Holy Family
Chapter IX The Critical Last Judgment
Through Rudolph , Critical Criticism has twice saved the world from downfall. but only that it may now itself decree the end of the world .
And I saw and heard a mighty angel, Herr Hirzel , flying from Zurich across the heavens. And he had in his hand a little book open like the fifth number of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung ., and he set his right foot upon the Mass and his left foot upon Charlottenburg; and he cried with a loud voice as when a lion roareth, and his words rose like a dove — chirp! chirp! — to the regions of pathos and thunder-like aspects of the Critical Last judgment .
England and Materialist Philosophy
Source : Labour Monthly , August 1923, pp. 105-113, “Further Selection from the Literary Remains of Karl Marx,“ translated and annotated by Max Beer; Original German : Aus dem literarischen nachlass von Marx und Engels , Vol. II, pp. 225-240; Transcribed : by Ted Crawford.
In 1844, Marx wrote “The Holy Family,“ a collection of essays directed against his friend Dr. Bruno Bauer, a university lecturer and Liberal theologian (one of the pioneers of higher criticism); the latter edited the Krilische Literaturzeitung , in which he gave a superficial view of French materialism, at the same time adversely criticising French Socialism. Marx, on the other hand, gave an analysis of the rôle of Descartes and Bayle, showing how French materialism arose from the physics of Descartes and the theory of knowledge of John Locke; further, how the deductions from the latter were made the basis of Utopian Socialism. The essay of Marx on those problems is too long and in some parts too concentrated to be reproduced here, but we give the salient points as a specimen of his philosophic mastery. It must be remembered that Marx wrote this essay at a time when his own views of Communism were still in the process of formation.
French materialism of the eighteenth century exhibits two currents, one having its origin in Descartes, the other in Locke. The latter exercised a dominating influence on the French mind and led directly to socialism. The former, the mechanical materialism, dominated French science. Both currents crossed in their courses.... Descartes, in his physics, endowed matter with creative power and conceived mechanical motion as its manifestation of life. He completely severed his physics from his metaphysics. Within his physics, matter is the only substance, the only reason of its existence and cognition. The French mechanical materialism adopted the physics of Descartes and rejected his metaphysics. His disciples were anti-metaphysicians by profession, namely, physicians. This school begins with the physician Leroy, reaches its culmination with the physician Cabanis, while the physician Lamettrie was its centre.... But the man who destroyed the credit of the metaphysics of the seventeenth century was Pierre Bayle. The negative refutation of theology and metaphysics, however, sharpened the desire for a positive, anti-metaphysical system. And it was Locke who supplied it. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding came in the nick of time for the other side of the Channel. It was enthusiastically acclaimed as a long-expected guest.
Materialism is the born son of Britain. Even one of his great schoolmen, Duns Scotus, asked himself ‘whether matter cannot think.’ In performing this wonder, Duns had recourse to God’s omnipotence, that is, he made theology itself preach materialism. He was, moreover, Nominalist. Nominalism is one of the main elements of the English materialists, as it is indeed the first expression of materialism in Christian Europe.
Notes from Foreign Languages Publishing House Edition, 1956
1. The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Critique. Against Bruno Bauer and Co. – the first joint work of Karl. Marx and Frederick Engels. It was written from September to November 1844 and published in February 1845 in Frankfurt-on-Main.
“The Holy Family“ is a humorous nickname for the Bauer brothers and their followers grouped around Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung ( General Literary Gazette ). Attacking Bauer and the other Young Hegelians (or Left Hegelians), Marx and Engels at the same time criticized Hegel’s own idealist philosophy.
Marx gave evidence of deep divergencies with the Young Hegelians as early as summer 1842, when the club of the “Free“ was formed in Berlin. When, in October 1842, Marx became editor of Rheinische Zeitung (Rhine Gazette ) , on the staff of which there were several Berlin Young Hegelians, he opposed the publication in the paper of insipid pretentious articles from the club, which had lost touch with reality and was absorbed in abstract philosophical disputes. During the two years following Marx’s break with the “Free,“ the theoretical and political differences between Marx and Engels on the one hand and the Young Hegelians on the other became most profound and irreconcilable. This was due to the fact that Marx and Engels had abandoned idealism for materialism and revolutionary democratism for communism; it was also due to the evolution that the Bauer brothers and their fellow-thinkers went through during that time. Bauer and his group published in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung disavowals of the “1842 radicalism“ and of its most conspicuous mouthpiece, Rheinische Zeitung; they slithered into the vilest vulgar subjective idealism, to propaganda of the “theory“ according to which only selected individuals, vehicles of the “spirit,“ of “pure criticism,“ are the makers of history, while the mass, the people, serves as inert material, ballast, in the historical process.
Marx and Engels decided to devote their first joint work to the exposure of these pernicious reactionary ideas and to the defence of their new materialistic and communistic outlook.
During a ten days’ stay of Engels in Paris the plan of the book – at first entitled Critique of Critical Critique. Against Bruno Bauer and Co – was drawn up, the parts were divided between the authors and the Foreword was written, Engels wrote his parts before leaving Paris. Marx, to whose share the larger part of the book fell. continued to work on it until the end of November 1844. He considerably increased the intended size of the book by using, in the writing of his sections part of his manuscripts on economics and philosophy on which he had been working in the spring and summer of 1844, his study of the history of the French Revolution and a number of excerpts and synopses. While the book was in the printing Marx completed the title with the words The Holy Family The table of contents showed which sections had been written by Marx and which by Engels (see Contents of the present edition pp. 5-6). As the book was more than 20 signatures and of small format, it was exempted from preliminary censorship according to the regulations then in vigour in a number of German states.
2. Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung ( General Literary Gazette ), a German monthly published by the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer in Charlottenburg from December 1843 to October 1844.
3. Marx here uses the world Mühleigner, a literal translation of the English mill-owner, to ridicule J. Faucher, of the editorial board of Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, who applied English methods of word formation in German.
4. The struggle for legislation limiting the working day to ten hours started in England as early as the end of the 18th century and spread by the 30s of the 19th century to the mass of the proletariat. As the landed aristocracy wanted to use this popular slogan in their fight against the industrial bourgeoisie they supported the Ten-Hour Bill in Parliament. The “Tory philanthropist“ Lord Ashley headed the supporters of the bill in Parliament in 1833.
5. These words are from Bruno Bauer’s book, Die gute Sache der Frefheit und meine eigene Angelegenheit (The Good Cause of Freedom and My Own Affair ) , Zurich and Winterthur, 1842.
6. The article in question here is “Herr Nauwerk and the Faculty of Philosophy“ published in No. VI of Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (May 1844) and signed “J“ – the first letter of Jungnitz.
7. The reference is to the dismissal of Bruno Bauer whom the Prussian Government deprived temporarily in October 1841 and permanently in March 1842 of the right to lecture in Bonn University because of his writings criticizing the Bible.
8. In this section Engels analyzes and quotes E. Bauer’s review of Flora Tristan’s I'Union Ouvrière ( The Workers’ Union ), Paris, 1843, which was published in No. V of Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (April 1844).
9. From Schiller’s Das Madchen aus der Fremde (The Maid from Abroad ) .
10. The reference is to P. J. Proudhon’s Qu'est-ce que la propriete? ou Recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement, ( What is Property? or Studies on the Principle of Law and of Government ) , first published in Paris in 1840. Marx quotes the Paris edition of 1841.