Manchester, 16 June 1867 

Dear Moor, 

I have been so distracted by all manner of bother with Monsieur 
Gottfried‘ and other suchlike affairs and disturbances for the past 
week that I seldom had the leisure to study the form of value. 
Otherwise, I would have sent the sheets? back to you long ago. 
Sheet 2 in particular has the marks of your carbuncles rather 
firmly stamped upon it, but there is not much that can be done 
about it now and I think you should not deal with it any further in 
the supplement, as your philistine really is not accustomed to this 
kind of abstract thinking and will certainly not torment himself for 
the sake of the form of value. At most, you could provide rather 
more extensive historical evidence for the conclusions you have 
here reached dialectically, you could, so to speak, apply the test of 
history, although you have already made the most essential points 
in that respect; but you have so much material that you can surely 
still write quite a good excursus on it, which will by historical 

4 Wilhelm Wolff - > Franziska Kugelmann - ¢ Gottfried Ermen -4 of the first 
volume of Capital 

means demonstrate to the philistine the need for the development 
of money and the process by which this takes place. 

It was a serious mistake not to have made the development of 
these rather abstract arguments clearer by means of a larger 
number of short sections with their own headings. You ought to 
have treated this part in the manner of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia," 
with short paragraphs, each dialectical transition emphasised by 
means of a special heading and, as far as possible, al] the excurses 
or merely illustrative material printed in special type. The thing 
would have looked somewhat like a school text-book, but a very 
large class of readers would have found it considerably easier to 
understand. The populus, even the scholars, just are no longer at 
all accustomed to this way of thinking, and one has to make it as 
easy for them as one possibly can. 

Compared with your earlier presentation (Duncker),” the 
dialectic of the argument has been greatly sharpened, but with 
regard to the actual exposition there are a number of things I like 
better in the first version. It is a great pity that the carbuncles 
have left their mark on the important second sheet in particular. 
However, there is nothing to be done about it now, and those who 
are capable of thinking dialectically will understand it, neverthe- 
less. The other sheets are very good, and I was delighted by them. 
I hope you will soon be able to send me another five or six sheets 
(and could you please enclose sheet 5 again so that I can pick up 
the thread properly); the sheets I have been reading one by one 
here will make a much better impression when read together. 

I’ve discovered a few more misprints. I would only list as errata 
those which really distort the sense. 

I called on Gumpert yesterday. Pauvre gargon!* He is deteriorat- 
ing with each day that passes. It was impossible to arouse his 
interest in anything scientific or even political. Town gossip and 
nothing more than town gossip. And yet he cannot understand 
why people don’t call on him more often. 

Have read Hofmann." For all its faults, the latest chemical 
theory does represent a great advance on the old atomistic theory. 
The molecule as the smallest part of matter capable of independent 
existence is a perfectly rational category, a ‘nodal point’,“*' as Hegel 
calls it, in the infinite progression of subdivisions, which does not 
terminate it, but marks a qualitative change. The atom— formerly 

4G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. - 
6 K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. - © Poor fellow! - 
d A. W. Hofmann, Einleitung in die moderne Chemie.