{London,] 25 March 1868 

Dear Fren, 

I wanted to write to you yesterday from the Museum," but I 
suddenly became so very unwell that I had to close the very 
interesting book I was reading. There was something like a black 
veil before my eyes. In addition, a frightful headache and chest 
constriction. So I crept home. The air and the light did me good, 
and at home I slept for some time. My state is such that I really 
should give up working and thinking entirely for some time; but 
that would be hard for me, even if I had the means to loaf. 

Ad vocem” Maurer: his books are extremely significant.© Not only 
the primitive age but also the entire later development of the free 
imperial cities, of the estate owners possessing immunity, of public 
authority, and of the struggle between the free peasantry and 
serfdom, get an entirely new character. 

The history of mankind is like palaeontology. Owing to a certain 
JUDICIAL BLINDNESS, even the best minds fail to see, on principle, what 
lies in front of their noses. Later, when the time has come, we are 
surprised that there are traces everywhere of what we failed to 
see. The first reaction to the French Revolution and_ the 
Enlightenment bound up with it was naturally to regard every- 
thing as mediaeval, romantic, and even people like Grimm are not 
free from this. The second reaction to it is to look beyond the 
Middle Ages into the primitive age of every people—and this 
corresponds to the socialist tendency, though these learned men 
have no idea that they are connected with it. And they are then 
surprised to find what is newest in what is oldest, and even 
EGALITARIANS TO A DEGREE. Which would have made Proudhon shudder. 

And we are all very much in the clutches of this JUDICIAL BLINDNESS: 
right in my own neighbourhood, on the Hunsrück,* the old 
Germanic system survived until the last few years. I now rem- 
ember my father‘ talking about it to me from a lawyer’s point of 
view. Another proof: just as the geologists, even the best like 

4 the British Museum Library - > Regarding - © See this volume, pp. 547-49, and 
554-55. - 4 mountains in the Rhine Province, Prussia - © Heinrich Marx 

Cuvier, have expounded certain faits* in a completely distorted 
way, so philologists of the force’ of a Grimm, mistranslated the 
simplest Latin sentences because they were under the influence of 
Moser, etc. (who, I remember, was enchanted that ‘freedom’ never 
existed among the Germans, but that ‘Luft macht eigen’‘). E.g. the 
famous passage in Tacitus: ‘aruva per annos mutant, et superest 
ager’,’ which means: they exchange the fields (arva) (by lot, 
hence also sortes‘ in all later Leges Barbarorum), and there 
remains over communal land (ager in distinction to arva as ager 
publicus'), Grimm and others translate: they till every year new 
fields, and there is still (untilled) land left over! 

In the same way the passage: ‘colunt discreti ac diversi’" is 
taken to prove that the Germans from the earliest times cultivated 
on individual farms like Westphalian squires. But the very same 
passage continues: ‘Vicos locant non in nostrum morem, connex- 
is et cohaerentibus aedificiis; suum quisque locum spatio 
circumdat’,' and such Germanic primitive villages, in the form 
described, still exist here and there in Denmark. Obviously 
Scandinavia must become as important for German jurisprudence 
and economics as for German mythology. Only by starting from 
there will we be able once again to decipher our past. Incidentally, 
even Grimm, etc., found in Caesar’s writings that the Germans 
always settled as kinship groups, and not as individuals: ‘gentibus 
cognationibusque, qui uno coierunt’! 

But what would ovp Hegel say, were he to learn in the hereafter 
that the general [das Allgemeine] in German and Nordic means 
only the communal land, and that the particular, the special [das 
Sundre, Besondere| means only private property divided off from 
the communal land? Here are the logical categories coming damn 
well out of ‘our intercourse’ after all. 

Very interesting is the book by Fraas (1847): Klima und 
Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit, eine Geschichte beider, namely as proving 
that climate and flora change in historical times. He is a Darwinist 
before Darwin, and admits even the species developing in historical 

a facts - > importance - © J. Moser, Patriotische Phantasien, Th. 3, S. 329. ‘Luft macht 
eigen’—part of a medieval German saying, ‘Stadtluft macht frei, Landluft macht 
eigen’, literally: ‘town air brings freedom, country air brings serfdom’. In medieval 
times a serf who moved to a town became free. - 4 Tacitus, Germania, 26. - © lot - 
f communal land - 8 Die Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Bd. 1. S. 661. - 
h they till separately and scattered - ‘ ‘They do not lay out villages in our fashion, with 
adjacent buildings one next to the other; each surrounds his dwelling with a free 
space’. - i ‘according to gentes and kinships, which settled together’ (Gaius Julius 
Caesar, Commentarii de bello Gallico, Lib. VI, 22). 

times. But he is at the same time agronomist. He claims that with 
cultivation—depending on its degree—the ‘moisture’ so beloved 
by the peasants gets lost (hence also the plants migrate from south 
to north), and finally steppe formation occurs. The first effect of 
cultivation is useful, but finally devastating through deforestation, 
etc. This man is both a thoroughly learned philologist (he has 
written books in Greek) and a chemist, agronomist, etc. The 
conclusion is that cultivation—when it proceeds in natural growth 
and is not consciously controlled (as a bourgeois he naturally does 
not reach this point)—leaves deserts behind it, Persia, 
Mesopotamia, etc., Greece. So once again an unconscious socialist 
tendency! 

This Fraas is also interesting as a German case-study. First Dr. 
med., then inspector and teacher of chemistry and technology. At 
present head of Bavarian veterinary services, university professor, 
head of state agricultural experiments, etc. In his latest writings 
you see his advanced age, but he is still a dashing fellow. He has 
been around a lot in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt! His history of 
agriculture is also important. He calls Fourier this ‘pious and 
humanist socialist’.* On the Albanians, etc. ‘every sort of shameless 
lechery and rape’. 

We must keep a close watch on the recent and very latest in 
agriculture. The physical school is pitted against the chemical. 

Do not forget to send me back the letter of Kugelmann’s 
manufacturer.‘ 

Nothing pleases me better than to see you here. 

Your 
K. M. 

Apropos. Edgar’s planter’s hat has been found again, and this 
time you can take it to Mrs Lizzy.°