sists also. And just because bourgeois economy has a
certain insight into the relations of the original causes of this
phenomenon, it does not alter it a particle. Bourgeois economy can
neither prevent crises, on the whole, nor can it stop the greed of the
individual capitalists, their disgrace and bankruptcy, nor can it
prevent the individual laborers from suffering deprivation of
employment and poverty. Man proposes and God (to wit, the outside
force of the capitalistic method of production) disposes. Mere
knowledge even though it be broader and deeper than bourgeois
economics is of no avail to upset the social forces of the master of
society. That is fundamentally a social act. Let us suppose that this
act is accomplished and society in all its grades freed from the
slavery to the means of production which it has made but which now
dominate it as an outside force. Let us suppose that man no longer
merely proposes but that he also disposes. Under such conditions the
last vestiges of the external force which now dominates man are
destroyed, that force which is now reflected in religion. Therewith,
the religious reflection itself is destroyed owing to the simple fact
that there is nothing more to reflect.

But Herr Duehring cannot wait until religion dies a natural death. He
treats it after a radical fashion. He out Bismarcks Bismarck, he makes
severe "May laws" not only against Catholicism but against all
religion. He sets his gendarmes of the future on religion and thereby
gives it a longer lease of life by martyrdom. Wherever we look we find
that Duehring's socialism has the Prussian brand.

After Herr Duehring has blithely got rid of religion he says "Man can
now, since he is dependent upon himself and nature alone,
intelligently direct the social forces in every way which open to him
the course of things and his own existence." Let us look for a little
while at that course of things to which the self-reliant human can
give direction.

The first in the course of things by which man becomes self-reliant is
being born. Then during the time of his immaturity his education is in
the hands of his mother. "This period may, as in the old Roman law,
reach to the age of puberty, that is to about fourteen years of age."
Only where the older boys do not respect the authority of the mother
does the father's assistance play a part and the public method of
education robs this of all harm. With puberty the boy comes under the