KARL MARX
37
MARX. Have you thought about what I asked you? Will you
share my struggles and exile?
JENNY. I will always be your comrade, Karl.
He embraces her.
MARX. But we must not yield to romantic escapism. There is a
meeting of the fraction at five, and we must not weaken the discipline
by lateness.
* * *
Bonn University, Germany. Office of Professor Hegel. Marx and
Engels come in arm and arm, in the costume of German students.
They are fine vigorous laughing young fellows. They find Bruno
Bauer, a young professor, standing looking out the window.
MARX. Why, Bruno, old boy!- why so gloomy? You ought to
be mustering all your forces to liberate Germany from the reactionary
feudal government of Friedrich Wilhelm IV!
BRUNO BAUER. Old Hegel has violated my academic freedom.
He hates me on account of my bold championship of the Young
Hegelian League, which was named after him but which he now
repudiates. He has summoned me to dismiss me from my chair; and
I hear that he is going to put in my place a lackey of the interests
named Sidney Cook, who teaches a mishmash of Dialectic and Prag–
matism.
MARX. How shameful ! We must unmask old Hegel!
Hegel enters. He wears a mask, but his identity is betrayed by
his slight stooping figure, his spectacles, his white mustache, and a
small tuft of hair that stands up at the back of his head.
HEGEL (
unctuously, rubbing his hands ) .
Well, well, young men:
what a beautiful sunny morning! We must believe in the Dialectic on
a fine sunny morning like this!
MARX. Haven't you been letting the Dialectic get a bit rusty late–
ly, Professor? It has been lying on your desk for months without your
even taking it out of its case!
E~GELS.
Everybody knows that you are teaching nothing but
Instrumentalism, and that your so-called educational methods are
merely the result of intellectual disorientation arising from your sub–
servience to the authorities!
HEGEL
(raging).
I will suppress your right of student opinion!
MARX AND ENGELS. Ha hal
Joyously they unmask him and stand him on his head.
MARX
(snatching the Dialectic from the desk).
Ours is the
Dialectic now!- Come, Bruno: you have not joined the YHL, al–
though you have defended it so courageously. You must get your card
today!
