Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

(^38) KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
frightful if your fiery love were to die, and you were to become cold
and unwilling ... You see, Karl, that is why I am not so completely
grateful, so thoroughly enchanted by your love as I ought to be; that
is why I am often mindful of external things, of life and reality, instead
of holding fast, as you would like, to the world of love, losing myself
in it and finding there a higher dearer spiritual unity with you enabling
ine to forget all other things.^80
Occasionally even Heinrich Marx began to regret that he had sanc-
tioned the engagement and was full of sound advice that his son was
obviously not in a position to follow:
Your exalted and exaggerated love cannot bring back peace to the person
to whom you have entirely given yourself and you run the contrary
risk of entirely destroying her. Exemplary conduct, a manly and firm
desire rapidly to raise yourself in the world without thereby alienating
people's goodwill and favour: this is the only way of creating a satisfac-
tory state of affairs and of both reassuring Jenny and raising her in her
own eyes and those of the world ... She is making an inestimable
sacrifice for you and gives evidence of a self-denial such as only cold
reason can fully appreciate ... You must give her the certainty that in
spite of your youth you are a man who merits the respect of the world
and can earn it.^8 '
Under the impact of his father's advice and the general atmosphere of
the university, Marx's romantic period did not survive long. Poetry, even
during his first year at Berlin, was not his only concern. He also read
widely in jurisprudence and felt compelled to 'struggle with philosophy'.^82
In the Berlin Law Faculty, the progressive Hegelian standpoint was repre-
sented by Eduard Gans, whose lectures Marx attended during the first
term. Gans was a baptised Jew, a liberal Hegelian who in his brilliant
lectures elaborated on the Hegelian idea of a rational development in
history by emphasising particularly its libertarian aspects, and the import-
ance of social questions. Gans approved of the French Revolution of
1830 , advocated a British style of monarchy, was impressed by the ideas
of Saint-Simon and was eager to find solutions to overcome 'the
struggle of the proletarians with the middle classes'.^85 The opposing
school of thought, known as the Historical School of Law, was represented
by Karl von Savigny, whose lectures Marx also attended. The Historical
School claimed to find the justification for laws in the customs and
traditions of a people and not in the theoretical systems of lawgivers.
This point of view linked law closely to history but had necessarily
reactionary overtones in that it looked to the past to reinforce its prin-
l iples of organic development.^84 There being no open political discussion
m the- Prussia of that time, the conflict between the principles of the