OF SOCIETY. 473 



the Commune of '93, where Chaumette, his apostle, re- 

 ceived the Socialists of Picardy and of Lyons. The 

 people were dying of hunger. Paper, laws, clubs, were 

 not sufficient. Bread was wanted. . . . Whatever 

 opinion one may form of the three famous Utopists, 

 we must admit that their systems, even their eccentrici- 

 ties, sprang from an admirable emotion, from the rising 

 of a most generous feeling. Babeuf . . . asks only for 

 the division of deserted lands, abounding everywhere 

 ... in order to make them productive ; Right is the 

 single basis, the universal right of men to a sufficient 

 living. Saint-Simon desires Progress. . . . Fourier raves 

 for Harmony" l " The state of France in '93 will never 

 be understood, the crescendo of its miseries accumulated 

 from century to century ... so long as a terrible book 

 has not been written which is wanting : the history of 

 Hunger." 2 Whether this picture of the causes of the 

 downfall of the old regime in France is exaggerated or 

 not does not concern us here. It is sufficient to say 

 that such a picture could not have been drawn of the 

 social state of things in Germany 3 in the latter part of 



1 J. Michelet. ' Histoire du 

 XIXe Siecle' (vol. i. p. 1). 



2 Ibid. (p. 4). 



A living picture of the be- 



bearing this title (3 vols. in four 

 parts, 1854-1880). The earlier part 

 of the period referred to is also 

 covered by Goethe's ' Autobio- 



ginnings of a more prosperous age j graphy.' Stimulating foreign in- 

 in Germany, disturbed as it in- fluences on Germany were mainly 



deed was by the foreign invasions 

 during the Seven Years' War, will 

 be found in the 6th chapter of 

 Gustav Freytag's ' Neue Bilder 

 aus dem Leben des Deutschen 

 Volkes' (1862). It bears the title 

 " Es wird Licht. " A fuller account 

 of the state of ' Germany in the 

 Eighteenth Century ' is given in 

 the large work of Biedermann 



in two very different directions. 

 First, there was the influence of 

 the age of Louis XIV., which 

 showed itself in the field of liter- 

 ature and taste, and more doubt- 

 fully in the culture of the aris- 

 tocracy and the many small courts. 

 The second influence was in the 

 province of Trade and Indus- 

 try, through the immigration of 



