LUDWIG GUMPLOWICZ 407
one-sided interests of the Manchester school and of capitalism, Gumplowicz insisted that sociology as a science must be kept free from the yoke of the subjective conception of the political and moral sciences.
Did he believe in the realization of this ideal?
No, but he loved it with the whole strength of his noble soul, and this, perhaps, characterizes better than anything else the nature of this scientific standpoint and the high dignity of that standard to which he remained true to the end. His innermost conviction commanded him to announce the idea, that the influ- ence of subjectivism would always remain the source of the com- mon mistakes and errors in the investigation of truth in so far as "the individual (i. e., the savant) acts as it is, and it is such, as its own milieu has created it;" but at the same time idealism whis- pered in his ear: "sociology must investigate the movements of the fighting parties and the laws of these movements from an impartial standpoint."
Among sociologists the one whom Gumplowicz valued most highly was Gustav Ratzenhofer who died in 1904. Not long ago he gave a flattering analysis of his system in the Warsaw Historical Review^ (Polish). Gumplowicz' high appreciation of the ideas of the philosopher, Ratzenhofer, has its source in the spiritual kinship of these two savants; and this kinship was the result of certain cultural qualities of the "Zeitgeist" which called into being such men as Carlo Cattaneo, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustav Ratzenhofer, and Ludwig Gumplowicz. All these men, though independent of each other, choosing different paths, turn- ing their eyes into different directions, yet all were trying to reach the same aim, namely a revaluation of those social moral values which, being looked upon by humanity as fixed, unalterable, and invulnerable, had to be adapted to the modern intellect; all these men, similar in their starting-points and yet independent of each other, will be added, as chosen sons of the nineteenth century, to that society of mighty minds who, on the wings of genius, soar high up into the future of the centuries and generations, and if in this respect Carlo Cattaneo was an eclectic sui generis, Nietzsche
'Przeglad Historycsny, Vol. VI (Warsaw, 1908).
