For the noble gentleman's conception of history that there was nothing but rubbish until D hring arrived this book also has the advantage that here one can quote his own crass words. Anyhow, I have him on the hip now. My plan is ready J'ai mon plan. First of all I shall deal with the trash in a purely objective and apparently serious way, and then the treatment will become sharper according to the degree in which the proofs of the nonsense on the one hand and of the platitudes on the other begin to pile up, until at last we get to a regular hailstorm. In this fashion Most and Co. are deprived of their excuse about "unkindness" and D hring gets his deserts all the same. These gentlemen must be shown that there is more than one way by which one can settle accounts with people of this kind. I hope Wilhelm [Liebknecht] will publish Most's article in the Neue Welt, for which it was obviously written. As usual Most cannot copy and so makes D hring responsible for the most comic imbecilities in the way of natural science, e.g., the breaking off of the rings (according to Kant's theory) from the fixed stars! With Wilhelm it is not merely the lack of manuscripts that could be got over by other articles on questions of the day, etc., as was done in Hepner's and Blos's time. It is his passion for supplementing the deficiencies of our theory, for having an answer to every philistine's objection and a picture of the society of the future because after all the philistine asks questions about it; and, in addition, for being as independent of us theoretically as possible (in which, owing to his total lack of all theory, he has always succeeded far better than he himself knows). But by all this he puts me into a position in which I cannot but say to myself that D hring is at any rate an educated man compared with the theoretical bunglers of the Volksstaat, and his works are at any rate better than those of these subjectively and objectively obscure gentlemen.... My re-reading of ancient history and my studies in natural science have been of great service to me for D hring and make the thing much easier for me in many ways. Especially with natural science I find that the ground has become considerably more familiar to me and that, though I have to exercise great caution, I can nevertheless move on it with a certain amount of freedom and security. I am also beginning to see the end of this job too. The thing is beginning to take shape in my head, and bummelling here at the seaside where I can let the details go round in my mind has helped this on a good deal. In this enormous field it is absolutely necessary to interrupt one's regular grind from time to time and to digest what one has gulped down. Herr Helmholz has never stopped chasing round the thing-in-itself since 1853 and has still not got clear about it. The man is not ashamed of calmly allowing the nonsense he had printed before Darwin to be still reprinted over again. ... Lizzie and I send our best regards to all of you. Friday we shall return to London. I am very glad Pumps has developed her style so well. I notice it of course too, but not so much.
Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1876