reached,
whose idol is free competition, and whose sum and substance for the
working-man is this, that he cannot do anything more rational than resign
himself to starvation. Here all education is tame, flabby, subservient
to the ruling politics and religion, so that for the working-man it is
merely a constant sermon upon quiet obedience, passivity, and resignation
to his fate.

The mass of working-men naturally have nothing to do with these
institutes, and betake themselves to the proletarian reading-rooms and to
the discussion of matters which directly concern their own interests,
whereupon the self-sufficient bourgeoisie says its _Dixi et Salvavi_, and
turns with contempt from a class which "prefers the angry ranting of ill-
meaning demagogues to the advantages of solid education." That, however,
the working-men appreciate solid education when they can get it unmixed
with the interested cant of the bourgeoisie, the frequent lectures upon
scientific, aesthetic, and economic subjects prove which are delivered
especially in the Socialist institutes, and very well attended. I have
often heard working-men, whose fustian jackets scarcely held together,
speak upon geological, astronomical, and other subjects, with more
knowledge than most "cultivated" bourgeois in Germany possess. And in
how great a measure the English proletariat has succeeded in attaining
independent education is shown especially by the fact that the
epoch-making products of modern philosophical, political, and poetical
literature are read by working-men almost exclusively. The bourgeois,
enslaved by social conditions and the prejudices involved in them,
trembles, blesses, and crosses himself before everything which really
paves the way for progress; the proletarian has open eyes for it, and
studies it with pleasure and success. In this respect the Socialists,
especially, have done wonders for the education of the proletariat. They
have translated the French materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot,
etc., and disseminated them, with the best English works, in cheap
editions. Strauss' "Life of Jesus" and Proudhon's "Property" also
circulate among the working-men only. Shelley, the genius, the prophet,
Shelley, and Byron, with his glowing sensuality and his bitter satire
upon our existing society, find most of their readers in the proletariat;
the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family editions, cut down
in accordance with the hypocritica