HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

8 ^eim.
PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION.
Only our latest descendants will be
in a position to decide whether we are
to be praised or blamed for having first
worked out our philosophy, and afterwards
our revolution. It seems to me
that a methodical people, such as we
are, must begin with the Reformation,
must then occupy itself with systems
of philosophy, and only after their completion
could it pass to the political revolution,
I find this sequence quite
rational. The heads that have first
served for philosophical speculation can
afterwards be struck off by the revolution
for whatever objects it may have
in view; but philosophy would not
have been able to utilize the heads
struck off by a revolution that preceded
it. But give yourselves no
anxiety, ye dear fellow-countrymen;
the German revolution will not prove
any milder or gentler because it was preceded
by the criticism of Kant, the
transcendental idealism of Fichte, or
even by the Philosophy of Nature.
These doctrines have served to develop
revolutionary forces that only await
their time to break forth and fill the
world with terror and with admiration.
When ye hear the trampling of feet
and the clashing of arms, ye neighbor
children, ye French, be on your guard,
and see that ye mingle not in the fray
going on among us at home there in