London, 7 November 1862 
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Lassalle, 

Freiligrath is sending you £60 today, this being the covering 
amount for the bill. The renewal of the same, about which I 
advised you when the operation began, will be effected only in so 
far as Borkheim is in receipt of a bill on you from me at 2 months 
after date (dated 6th November, hence payable about 9 January 
1863) for the sum of 100 talers, or £15. 

From the few lines you wrote me from time to time, I can see 
that your rancour persists, as, no doubt, the form of the letters 
was intended to indicate. 

The long and the short of it is that you are both in the right 
and in the wrong. You ask me to send you a copy of the letter you 
wrote from Baden.” For what purpose? So that you could ascertain 
whether your letter mightn’t actually have provided a pretext for. 
the one I wrote to Zurich?* Granting you all your power or ANALysis, 
can you, with your eyes, detect what was read by my eyes and, 
more particularly, can you deduce therefrom the conditions under 
which my eyes were reading? In order to prove to me that I had 
misread your words, you would have to equate first the readers 
and then the circumstances of the readers, an equation you would 

4 See this volume, p. 264. - & Wildbad. See this volume, p. 410. - © ibid., p. 409. 

again tackle as Lassalle under Lassallean conditions and not as 
Marx under Marxian conditions. Hence nothing could come of it 
but fuel for fresh controversy. How little the power or anatysis helps 
in such transactions is evident to me from your letter. For you 
ascribe to me something I didn’t mean. Whatever the cir- 
cumstances, I myself must be the best judge of the latter. The 
wording of the letter may support your view, but, as to the 
meaning that lay behind the words, I myself am, de prime abord; 
better informed than you. You hadn’t so much as an inkling of 
what had got my back up, namely the impression gained from 
reading your letter (wrongly, as I now discover on re-reading it in a 
more serene frame of mind) that you doubted whether I was acting 
with Engels’ consent. I concede that I made no mention of this in 
my letter and that, leaving the personal relationship aside and 
simply having regard to our business relationship, it was an absurd 
supposition. Sri, IT APPEARED SO TO ME AT THE MOMENT I wrore To you. I 
further concede that this, my real grievance, was not expressed, 
perhaps not even hinted at, in my letter; rather, the issuz has been 
ON A FALSE point. Such is the sophistry of all passion. 

So, anyhow, you are in the wrong because of the way you 
interpreted my letter; I am in the wrong because I wrote it and 
supplied the materia peccans.” 

Is there to be an outright split between us because of this? I 
believe that the substance of our friendship is strong enough to 
withstand the shock. I confess to you, sans phrase, that I, as a man 
on a powder barrel, permitted myself to be swayed by cir- 
cumstances in a manner unbecoming to an animal rationale. But, at 
all events, it would be ungenerous of you, as a jurist and 
prosecutor, to hold against me a status animi’ in which I would 
have liked nothing better than to blow my brains out. 

So, I trust that, ‘despite everything’,“ our old relationship will 
continue untroubled. 

Since that time I have been on the Continent, in Holland, Trier, 
etc., in order to arrange my affairs.“ J’ai abouti a rien! 

1 had intended to send you the Roscher, but discovered that 
the cost of sending it would be 10/-, the price, if not the actual 
value, of the Roscher. However, I hope to find an opportunity 
soon. 

a first and foremost - > the inflammatory material - © without beating about the 
bush - 4 state of mind - ¢ An allusion to F. Freiligrath’s poem “Trotz alledem!’ - 
{I have achieved nothing. - 8 W. Roscher, System der Volkswirthschaft. 

My cousin in Amsterdam writes to say that, at his suggestion, 
your book” will be discussed at length in the Amsterdam legal 

journal by their most learned jurist. 
Salut. 

Your 
K. M. 

I have been prevented from doing any work at all on my 
book *!” for some 6 weeks and am now going ahead, but only with 
interruptions. However, it will assuredly be brought to a conclu- 
sion BY AND BY.