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The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature

that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and

that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was

introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that

country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.

German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits,

eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when

these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social

conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with

German social conditions, this French literature lost all its

immediate practical significance, and assumed a purely literary

aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth

century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing

more than the demands of "Practical Reason" in general, and the

utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie

signified in their eyes the law of pure Will, of Will as it was

bound to be, of true human Will generally.