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The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of

the French historical criticisms they dubbed "Philosophy of

Action," "True Socialism," "German Science of Socialism,"

"Philosophical Foundation of Socialism," and so on.

The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely

emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to

express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt

conscious of having overcome "French one-sidedness" and of

representing, not true requirements, but the requirements of

truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of

Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no

reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical

fantasy.

This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously

and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such

mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic

innocence.