Karl Marx: A Biography

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38 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

organisation of the paper since September of the previous year. The new
appointment made the authorities so anxious as to the tendency of the
paper that suppression was suggested by the central Government; but
the President of the Rhineland province, fearing that this would create
popular unrest, only promised closer supervision.
From the start Marx enjoyed a great reputation in the Cologne Circle.
Jung said of him that 'Although a devil of a revolutionary, Dr Marx is
one of the most penetrating minds I know.'^150 And Moses Hess, a man
of generous enthusiasm, introduced him to his friend Auerbach as follows:

You will be pleased to make the acquaintance of a man who is now one

of our friends, although he lives in Bonn where he will soon be lectur-

ing. He made a considerable impression on me although our fields are

very close; in brief, prepare to meet the greatest - perhaps the only

genuine - philosopher now alive, who will soon ... attract the eyes of

all Germany ... Dr Marx ... will give medieval religion and politics

their coup de grace. He combines the deepest philosophical seriousness

with the most biting wit. Imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing,

Heine, and Hegel fused into one person - I say fused not juxtaposed -

and you have Dr Marx.^151

Marx had already been asked in January by Bauer why he did not
write for the Rheinische Zeitung; and in March, pressed by Jung, he began
to transfer his major effort from Ruge's journal to that newspaper.^152 One
of his first contributions, though it was not published until August, was
a criticism of the Historical School of Law. Written in April 1842 , this
article was occasioned by the appointment of Karl von Savigny as Minister
of Justice, who was expected to introduce into the legal system the
romantic and reactionary ideas of the new king. Thus it was indirectly
an attack on the institutions of the Prussian 'Christian state'. The Histori-
cal School of Law had just published a manifesto in honour of their
founder Gustav Hugo (1764-1844), who held that historical existence was
the prime justification of any law. Marx's main point was that this position
forced Hugo to adopt an absolute scepticism which deprived him of any
criterion of judgement. Against this position Marx employed a rationalism
based on Spinoza and Kant, both of whom refused to equate the positive
with the rational: 'Hugo desecrates everything that is sacred to lawful,
moral, political man. He smashes what is sacred so that he can revere it
as an historical relic; he violates it before the eyes of reason so that he
can later honour it before the eyes of history; at the same time he also
wants to honour historical eyes.'^15 ' In short, the Historical School of Law
had only one principle - 'the law of arbitrary power'.^154

AT the same time as writing the attack on Hugo, Marx decided to