London, 1 November 1891

Dear Schmidt, First of all, my congratulations on your engagement and, I hope, very imminent marriage. Let me know what the fateful day is to be so that we may drink to the health of yourself and your young bride, as we shall meanwhile be doing at lunchtime today with a glass of port.

May I also congratulate you on the agreement with Guttentag; it’s a worthwhile undertaking but you will have to devote a good deal of time to it.3#7 Next week I shall be tackling Volume III” (which partArbetiterinnen-Zeitung - of Capital ly explains this expeditious reply since all my correspondence must be polished off first), and won’t, I think, have to stop till whole thing’s polished off. Thus you will also be able to include this essential final section.

You cannot, of course, do without Hegel and he’s another chap whom it will take you time to digest. The short paper on logic in the Encyklopéidie would be quite good to start off with, but the edition you should have is that in Volume 6 of the Werke — not Rosenkranz’s separate edition (1845) since the former contains far more explanatory notes from the lectures, even if that idiot Henning himself frequently fails to understand the latter.

In the introduction, in §26, etc., you have first the critique of Wolf's version of Leibniz (metaphysics in the Azstorical sense), then that of the English and French empiricists in $37, etc., then that of Kant, §40 et seqq. and, finally, that of Jacobi’s mysticism, §61.— In the first section (Being), you ought not to linger too long over being and nothing — the last paragraphs on quality followed by quantity and measure are much nicer, but the theory of essence constitutes the main section: the dissolution of abstract opposites into their insubstantiality when, as soon as one tries to grasp one aspect alone, it changes imperceptibly into the other, etc. At the same time you can always clarify things by means of concrete examples. E. g. you, as a fiancé, and your affianced yourselves present an outstanding example of the indivisibility of identity and difference. It is quite impossible to ascertain whether sexual love is the pleasure derived from identity in difference or that derived from difference in identity. Remove the difference (in this case of sex) or the identity (the humanity of both), and what remains? I remember how tormented I used to be at first by this indivisibility of identity and difference, though we cannot take one step without stumbling over it.

On no account, however, should you read Hegel as Mr Barth has read him, namely so as to discover the paralogisms and shabby expedients that served him as tools for constructing his system. That is a schoolroom exercise, nothing more. What is far more important is to discover the truth and the genius beneath the falsity of the form and the factitious context. For instance, the transitions from one category or opposite to another are almost always arbitrary — and are often achieved by means of a joke, as in §120, when positive and negaSince, in Hegel, each category represents a stage in the history of philosophy (as, indeed, he usually indicates), you would be welladvised to read the Vorlesungen tiber Geschichte der Philosophie— one of his most brilliant works—by way of comparison. For recreation I would commend the Asthetik. Once you have gained some familiarity with it you will be amazed.

The inversion of Hegel’s dialectics is based on the assumption that it is the ‘self-development of the idea’ of which, therefore, the dialectic of facts is only the image, while the dialectic in our minds is but the reflection of the actual development taking place in the natural world and human history in obedience to dialectical forms.

You should try comparing the Marxian progression from commodity noble Wolf has sent me his opus in the form of an off-print. But, although asked by an anonymous ‘admirer’ ” whether I intend to ‘box the fellow’s ears’, I haven’t looked at it yet. An academic of that sort can wait.

The party congress went off very well. The amount of attention devoted to the ‘opposition’ did no harm; though it may have amused the philistines it undoubtedly had a very salutary effect upon the party.

Bebel and Adler spent a few days over here after the Brussels Congress,'35 when we were all very jolly. Bernstein’s excellent introduction to Lassalle is coming out in English.

J. Wolf, ‘Das Ratsel der Durchschnittsprofitrate bei Marx’, Jahrbicher für Nationalékonomie und Statistik, 2. Bd., 3. Folge.- See this volume, p. 241.

Well, I hope that a whole lot of students, both male and female, will attend your first course of lectures. Kindest regards.

Yours, F. Engels Mrs Kautsky sends you and likewise your fiancée her most sincere congratulations.