We may go further and say that at that date Germany had only two men whose insight into the facts and tendencies of their time was in some real degree adequate to the occasion—Bismarck and Lassalle. The former represented a historic cause, which was ready for action, the regeneration and unification of Germany to be accomplished by the Prussian army. The cause which Lassalle brought to the front was at a very different stage of progress. The working men, its promoters and representatives, and Lassalle, its champion, had not attained to anything like clearness either as to the end to be gained or the means for accomplishing it. It was only at the crudest and most confused initial stage. ----- [1] The most important works of Lassalle are mentioned in the text. See Georg Brandes, _Ferdinand Lassalle_; Franz Mehring, _Die Deutsche Social-demokratie, ihre Geschichte und ihre Lehre_; W. H. Dawson, _German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle_. [2] Schulze-Delitzsch was born in 1808 at Delitzsch, in Prussian Saxony, whence the second part of his name, to distinguish him from the many other people in Germany who bear the familiar name of Schulze. It was his great merit that he founded the co-operative movement in Germany on principles of self-help. He was a leading member of the Progressist party. [3] In contrast to the unequal and indirect system existing in Prussia, according to which the voters are on a property basis divided into three classes. The voters thus arranged choose bodies of electors, by whom the members for the Chamber are chosen. [4] Bastiat was the populariser in France of the orthodox Political Economy. Lassalle accused Schulze of being a mere echo of Bastiat’s superficial views, and therefore called him Bastiat-Schulze. II. Theories of Lassalle The socialistic position of Lassalle may generally be described as similar to that of Rodbertus and Karl Marx. He admits his indebtedness to both of those writers, but at the same time he cannot be regarded as a disciple of either of them. Lassalle himself was a thinker of great original power; he had his own way of conceiving and expressing the historic socialism.