London, 27 June 1870 

Dear King Wenceslaus,* 

I returned here this week after a stay of one month in 
Manchester, and found your letter waiting.” 

In fact I can give you no reply as to the date of my departure, 
and not even to the question—which you have not asked— 
namely, whether I shall travel at all. 

Last year I anticipated that, after the Easter Fair, I would have a 
second edition of my book,” and consequently the takings from the 
first edition. You will see, however, from the enclosed letter from 
Meissner, which arrived today, that all this is still a long way 
off. (Be so kind as to send me the letter back.) 

Messieurs the German professors have recently found them- 
selves obliged to take note of me now and then, even if in a very 
silly way; for example, A. Wagner in a pamphlet on landed 
property, and Held (Bonn) in a pamphlet about the rural loan 
banks in the Rhine Province.‘ 

Mr Lange (On the workers’ question, etc., 2nd edition)* pays me 
great compliments, but with the object of increasing his own 
importance. Mr Lange, you see, has made a great discovery. All 
history may be subsumed in one single great natural law. This 
natural law is the phrase (—the Darwinian expression becomes, in 
this application, just a phrase—) ‘struggle For LiFe’, and the content 
of this phrase is the Malthusian law of population, or RATHER 
over-population. Thus, instead of analysing this ‘struggle FOR LIFE’ aS 
it manifests itself historically in various specific forms of society, all 
that need be done is to transpose every given struggle into the 
phrase ‘srruccte ror Lire’, and then this phrase into the Malthusian 
‘population fantasy’. It must be admitted that this is a very 
rewarding method—for stilted, mock-scientific, highfaluting ig- 
norance and intellectual laziness. 

4 Kugelmann’s nickname -» the first volume of Capital-* See this volume, 
pp. 529-30. - 4d A. Wagner, Die Abschaffung des privaten Grundeigenthums; A. Held, 
Die ldndlichen Darlehenskassenvereine in der Rheinprovinz und thre Beziehungen zur 
Arbeiterfrage. -¢ F. A. Lange, Die Arbeiterfrage. Ihre Bedeutung für Gegenwart und 
Zukunft. 

And what this Lange has to say about the Hegelian method and 
my application of the same is simply childish. First, he under- 
stands rien* about Hegel’s method and, therefore, second, still less 
about my critical manner of applying it. In one respect he reminds 
me of Moses Mendelssohn. That prototype of a windbag once 
wrote to Lessing asking how he could possibly take ‘that dead dog 
Spinoza’ au sérieux! In the same way, Mr Lange expresses 
surprise that Engels, I, etc., take au sérieux the dead dog Hegel, 
after Biichner, Lange, Dr Dühring, Fechner, etc., had long agreed 
that they —poor prar—had long since buried him. Lange is naive 
enough to say that I ‘move with rare freedom’ in empirical matter. 
He has not the slightest idea that this ‘free movement in matter’ is 
nothing but a paraphrase for the method of dealing with 
matter—that is, the dialectical method. 

My best thanks to Madame la comtesse‘ for her kind lines. This 
really does one good at a time ‘when more and more of the better 
ones are disappearing’. But, sérieusement parlant,’ I am always 
pleased when a few lines from your dear wife remind me of the 
happy times I spent in your circle. 

Regarding Meissner’s pressure for the second volume,*' I was 
not only held up by illness throughout the winter. I found it 
necessary to mug up on my Russian, because, in dealing with the 
land question, it has become essential to study Russian land- 
owning relationships from primary sources. In addition, in 
connection with the Irish land question, the English Government 
has published a series of siur sooxs (soon concluding) about the 
land relations 1n att countries. Finally— entre nous—I would like the 
second edition of Vol. I first. It would simply be disturbing if this 
came in the middle of the uttmare finalisation of Vol. II. 

BEST COMPLIMENTS ON Jenny's PART AND MY OWN TO ALL FHE MEMBERS OF THE 
Kugelmann ramizy. 

Your 
K. M.