diplomatist then resident at Geneva, who would have nothing to do with Lassalle. The lady was imprisoned in her own room, and soon, apparently under the influence of very questionable pressure, renounced Lassalle in favour of another admirer, a Wallachian, Count von Racowitza. Lassalle sent a challenge both to the lady’s father and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, the meeting took place on the morning of August 28, 1864, when Lassalle was mortally wounded, and he died on the 31st of August. In spite of such a foolish ending, his funeral was that of a martyr, and by many of his adherents he has been regarded since with feelings almost of religious devotion.
Lassalle did not lay claim to any special originality as a socialistic thinker, nor did he publish any systematic statement of his views. Yet his leading ideas are sufficiently clear and simple. Like a true Hegelian he saw three stages in the development of labour: the ancient and feudal period, which, through the subjection of the labourer, sought solidarity without freedom; the reign of capital and the middle classes, established in 1789, which sought freedom by destroying solidarity; and the new era, beginning in 1848, which would reconcile solidarity with freedom by introducing the principle of association. It was the basis and starting-point of his opinions that, under the empire of capital and so long as the working man was merely a receiver of wages, no improvement in his condition could be expected. This position he founded on the law of wages formulated by Ricardo, and accepted by all the leading economists, that wages are controlled by the ordinary relations of supply and demand, that a rise in wages leads to an increase in the labouring population, which, by increasing the supply of labour, is followed by a corresponding fall of wages. Thus population increases or decreases in fixed relation to the rise or fall of wages. The condition of the working man will never permanently rise above the mere standard of living required for his subsistence, and the continued supply of his kind. Lassalle held that the co-operative schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch on the principle of “self-help” were utterly inadequate, for the obvious reason that the working classes were destitute of capital. The struggle of the working man helping himself with his empty pockets against the capitalists he compared to a battle with teeth and nails against modern artillery. In short, Lassalle accepted the orthodox political economy to show that the inevitable operation of its laws left no hope for the working classes, and that no remedy could be found but by abolishing the conditions in which these laws had their validity—in other words, by abolishing the present relations of labour and capital altogether. And this could only be done by the productive association of the working men with money provided by the state. And he held that such association should be the voluntary act of the working men, the government merely reserving the right to examine the books of the various societies. All the arrangements should be carried out according to the rules of business usually followed in such transactions. But how move the government to grant such a loan? Simply by introducing (direct) universal suffrage. The working men were an overwhelming majority; they were the state, and should control the government. The aim of Lassalle, then, was to organize the working classes into a great political power, which in the way thus indicated, by peaceful resolute agitation, without violence or insurrection, might attain the goal of productive association. In this way the fourth estate would be emancipated from the despotism of the capitalist, and a great step taken in the solution of the great “social question.”
It will be seen that the net result of Lassalle’s life was to produce a European scandal, and to originate a socialistic movement in Germany, which, at the election of 1903, returned to the Reichstag eighty-one members and polled 3,010,771 votes, and at the election of 1907 returned forty-three members and polled 3,258,968 votes. (The diminution in the number of members returned in 1907 was due mostly to combination among the different political groups.) This result, great as it was, would hardly have been commensurate with his ambition, which was boundless. In the heyday of his passion for Fräulein von Dönniges, his dream was to be enthroned as the president of the German republic with her seated at his side. With his energy, ability and gift of dominating and organizing, he might indeed have done a great deal. Bismarck coquetted with him as the representative of a force that might help him to combat the Prussian liberals; in 1878, in a speech before the Reichstag, he spoke of him with deep respect, as a man of the greatest amiability and ability from whom much could be learned. Even Bishop Ketteler of Mainz had declared his sympathy for the cause he advocated.
Lassalle’s Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos (Berlin, 1858), and the System der erworbenen Rechte (Leipzig, 1861) are both marked by great learning and intellectual power. But of far more historical interest are the speeches and pamphlets connected with his socialistic agitation, of which the most important are—Ueber Verfassungswesen; Arbeiterprogramm; Offenes Antwortschreiben; Zur Arbeiterfrage; Arbeiterlesebuch; Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, oder Kapital und Arbeit. His drama, Franz von Sickingen, published in 1859, is a work of no poetic value. His Collected Works were issued at Leipzig in 1899–1901.
The best biography of Lassalle is H. Oncken’s Lassalle (Stuttgart, 1904); another excellent work on his life and writings is George Brandes’s Danish work, Ferdinand Lassalle (German translation, 4th ed., Leipzig, 1900). See also A. Aaberg, Ferdinand Lassalle (Leipzig, 1883); C. v. Plener, Lassalle (Leipzig, 1884); G. Meyer, Lassalle als Sozialökonom (Berlin, 1894); Brandt, F. Lassalles sozialökonomische Anschauungen und praktische Vorschläge (Jena, 1895); Seillière, Études sur Ferdinand Lassalle (Paris, 1897); E. Bernstein, Ferd. Lassalle und seine Bedeutung für die Arbeiterklasse (Berlin, 1904). There is a considerable literature on his love affair and death; the most notable books are: Meine Beziehungen zu F. Lassalle, by Helene von Racowitza, a very strange book; Enthüllungen über das tragische Lebensende F. Lassalle’s by B. Becker; Im Anschluss an die Memoiren der H. von Racowitza, by A. Kutschbach, and George Meredith’s Tragic Comedians (1880). (T. K.)
LASSEN, CHRISTIAN (1800–1876), German orientalist,
was born on the 22nd of October 1800, at Bergen in Norway. Having
received his earliest university education at Christiania, he went
to Germany, and continued his studies at Heidelberg and Bonn.
In the latter university Lassen acquired a sound knowledge of
Sanskrit. He next spent three years in Paris and London,
engaged in copying and collating MSS., and collecting materials
for future research, especially in reference to the Hindu drama
and philosophy. During this period he published, jointly with
E. Burnouf, his first work, Essai sur le Pâli (Paris, 1826). On his
return to Bonn he studied Arabic, and took the degree of Ph.D.,
his dissertation discussing the Arabic notices of the geography
of the Punjab (Commentatio geographica atque historica de
Pentapotamia Indica, Bonn, 1827). Soon after he was admitted
Privatdozent, and in 1830 was appointed extraordinary and in
1840 ordinary professor of Old Indian language and literature.
In spite of a tempting offer from Copenhagen, in 1841, Lassen
remained faithful to the university of his adoption to the end of
his life. He died at Bonn on the 8th of May 1876, having been
affected with almost total blindness for many years. As early
as 1864 he was relieved of the duty of lecturing.
In 1829–1831 he brought out, in conjunction with August W. von Schlegel, a critical annotated edition of the Hitopadeśa. The appearance of this edition marks the starting-point of the critical study of Sanskrit literature. At the same time Lassen assisted von Schlegel in editing and translating the first two cantos of the epic Rāmāyana (1829–1838). In 1832 he brought out the text of the first act of Bhavabhūti’s drama, Mālatīmādhava, and a complete edition, with a Latin translation, of the Sānkhya-kārikā. In 1837 followed his edition and translation of Jayadeva’s charming lyrical drama, Gītagovinda and his Institutiones linguae Pracriticae. His Anthologia Sanscritica, which came out the following year (new ed. by Johann Gildemeister, 1868), contained several hitherto unpublished texts, and did much to stimulate the study of Sanskrit in German universities. In 1846 Lassen brought out an improved edition of Schlegel’s text and translation of the “Bhagavadgītā.” He did not confine himself to the study of Indian languages, but acted likewise as a scientific pioneer in other fields of philological inquiry. In his Beiträge zur Deutung der Eugubinischen Tafeln (1833) he prepared the way for the correct interpretation of the Umbrian inscriptions; and the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (7 vols., 1837–1850), started and largely conducted by him, contains, among other valuable papers from his pen, grammatical sketches of the Beluchi and Brahui languages, and an essay on the Lycian inscriptions.
Soon after the appearance of Burnouf’s Commentaire sur le Yaçna (1833), Lassen also directed his attention to the Zend, and to Iranian studies generally; and in Die altpersischen Keilinschriften von Persepolis (1836) he first made known the true character of the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions, thereby anticipating, by one month, Burnouf’s Mémoire on the same subject, while Sir Henry Rawlinson’s famous memoir on the Behistun inscription, though drawn up in Persia, independently of contemporaneous European research, at about the same time, did not reach the Royal Asiatic Society until three years later. Subsequently Lassen published, in the sixth volume of his journal (1845), a collection of all the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions known up to that date. He also was the first scholar in Europe who took up, with signal success, the decipherment of the newly-discovered Bactrian coins, which furnished him the materials for Zur Geschichte der griechischen und indo-skythischen Könige in Bakterien, Kabul, und Indien (1838). He contemplated bringing out a critical edition of the Vendidad; but, after publishing the first five fargards (1852), he felt that his whole energies were required for the successful accomplishment of the great undertaking of his life—his Indische Altertumskunde. In this work—completed in four volumes, published respectively in 1847 (2nd ed., 1867), 1849 (2nd ed., 1874), 1858 and 1861—which forms one of the greatest monuments of untiring industry and critical scholarship, everything that could be gathered from native and foreign sources, relative to the political, social and intellectual development of India, from the
