The prosecutor seems to feel himself hampered by the fact that he has here to do with a scientific production, for he begins his indictment with the sentence: "While the accused has assumed an appearance of scientific inquiry, his discussion at all points is of a practical bearing." The appearance of scientific inquiry? And why is it the appearance only? I call upon the prosecutor to show why only the appearance of scientific inquiry is to be imputed to this scientific publication. I believe that in a question as to what is scientific and what not, I am more competent to speak than the public prosecutor.
In various and difficult fields of science I have published voluminous works ; I have spared no pains and no midnight vigils in the endeavor to widen the scope of science itself, and, I believe, I can in this matter say with Horace: Militavi non sine gloria.[1] But I declare to you: Never, not in the most voluminous of my works, have I written a line that was more carefully thought out in strict conformity to scientific truth than this production is from its first page to its last. And I assert further that not only is this brochure a scientific work, as so many another may be that presents in combination results already known, but that it is in many respects a scientific achievement, a development of new scientific conceptions.
What is the criterion by which the scientific standing of a book is to be judged? None else, of course, than its contents.
I beg you, therefore, to take a look at the contents of this pamphlet. Its content is nothing else than a philosophy of history, condensed in the compass of forty-four pages, beginning with the Middle Ages and coming down to the present. It is a development of that objective unfolding of rational thought which has lain at the root of European history for more than a thousand years past; it is an exposition of that inner soul of things resident in the process of history that manifests itself in the apparently
- ↑ I have fought not without glory.
