When the elections of 1897 recorded a severe setback for the party the progressives were told to keep the eyes of faith on the "ultimate goal" of Socialism. One of the réformistes replied: "The whole idea of an ultimate goal is distasteful to me. There is no ultimate goal; for beyond your ultimate goal is another world of striving."[30] And another critic said: "Nothing wears threadbare so rapidly by constant use as words of faith. Constantly spoken or heard, they become stereotyped into phrases, and the inspired prophet creates the same offensive impression as a priest who has nothing else to offer but words." The interest of the workingman "finds its expression in the practicalness of the second part of the Erfurter program, and the wholly practical work of the party."[31] It was at this time that Edward Bernstein, friend and literary heir of Engel, published a series of critical papers in the party journal, _Die Neue Zeit_, attacking especially the catastrophic and revolutionary postulates and saying "the movement is everything, the goal is nothing." Kautsky, the dogmatist of the party, replied to these articles and a feverish discussion followed in all the party press.[32] In the party conventions of 1898 and 1899 this controversy was waged with considerable energy. Von Vollmar made merry over Kautsky's "inquisition" and called the debate "a noisy cackling over nothing." The mass of the party, he said, did not trouble their heads about theories, but plodded along unmindful of hairsplitting.[33] Bebel made a herculean effort to reconcile both elements. To the revisionists he said, "We are in a constant state of intellectual moulting,"[34] to the orthodox he said, "We remain what we have always been."[35] It was at Dresden, 1903, that the revisionist tempest reached its height in the party teapot. The Germans' love for polysyllabic phrase-making, for which Jaurès taunted them at the Amsterdam congress, was here given full play. Von Vollmar repeated that nobody except a few dull theorists read Kautsky's or Bernstein's views; the mass of voters cared for practical results, and "revisionists and anti-revisionists are nothing but a bugbear."[36] Here the matter rested until the elections of 1907 opened the eyes of the party high priests. They gained only 248,249 votes and lost one-half of their seats in the Reichstag. A number of the leading Socialists promptly began to attack the dogmas of the party program as illusions and pitfalls. The class war, the revolutionary method, the theory of an ever-increasing proletariat and decreasing bourgeoisie were attacked as unscientific, and illusory. "The Erfurt program recites a vagary, it repels the intellect, it must be changed;" that was the opinion of the advanced thinkers of the party.