Hitherto Lassalle had been known only as the author of two learned works, as connected with an extraordinary lawsuit which had become a wide-spread scandal, and as a young man of whom even the most distinguished veterans expected great things. Now began the short-lived activity which was to give him an historical significance. It was early in 1862, when the struggle of Bismarck with the Prussian liberals was already begun. Lassalle, who had always been a democrat of the most advanced type, saw that an opportunity had come for asserting a third great cause—that of the working men—which would outflank the liberalism of the middle classes, and might even command the sympathy of the Government. His political programme was, however, entirely subordinate to the social, that of bettering the condition of the working-classes, for which he believed the schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch were utterly inadequate. Lassalle flung himself into the career of agitator with his accustomed vigour. His worst difficulties were with the working men themselves, among whom he met the most discouraging apathy. For a war to the knife with the liberal press he was quite prepared, and he accepted it manfully. His mission as organizer and emancipator of the working class lasted only two years and a half. In that period he issued about twenty separate publications, most of them speeches and pamphlets, but one of them, that against Schulze-Delitzsch, a considerable treatise, and all full of keen and vigorous thought. He founded the “Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein,” was its president and almost single handed champion, conducted its affairs, and carried on a vast correspondence, not to mention about a dozen state prosecutions in which he was during that period involved. Berlin, Leipsic, Frankfurt, and the industrial centres on the Rhine, were the chief scenes of his activity. His greatest success was on the Rhine, where in the summers of 1863 and 1864 his travels as missionary of the new gospel resembled a triumphal procession. The agitation was growing rapidly, but he had achieved little substantial success when a most unworthy death closed his career.

While posing as the Messiah of the poor, Lassalle was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits. His suppers were well known as among the most exquisite in Berlin. It was the most piquant feature of his life that he, one of the gilded youth, a connoisseur in wines, and a learned man to boot, had become agitator and the champion of the working man. In one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin he had met a young lady, a Fräulein von Dünniges, for whom he at once felt a passion, which was ardently reciprocated. In the summer of 1864 he met her again on the Rigi, when they resolved to marry. She was a young lady of twenty, decidedly unconventional and original in character, but the daughter of a Bavarian diplomatist then resident at Geneva, who was angry beyond all bounds when he heard of the proposed match, and would have absolutely 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, who had resorted to every available means to gain his end, was now mad with rage, and 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. 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. His aim was not scientific or theoretic completeness, but the practical one of organizing and emancipating the working classes; and his plans were promulgated in occasional speeches and pamphlets, as the crises of his agitation seemed to demand. 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 well-known 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. The states of Europe had spent hundreds of millions in silly dynastic squabbles, or to appease the wounded vanity of royal mistresses; why refuse to advance a few millions to solve the greatest problem of modern civilization? Lassalle’s estimate was that a loan of a hundred million thalers would be more than enough to bring the principle of productive association into full movement throughout the kingdom of Prussia. And he held that such association should be the voluntary act of the working men themselves, the Government merely reserving to itself 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, in spite of repressive laws, at last election (1881) was able to return thirteen members to the reichstag. This result was hardly 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; so late as 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 two learned works were Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Eρhesos (Berlin, 1858), and the System der erworbenen Rechte (Leipsic, 1861), 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; Arbeiter-lesebuch; Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, oder Kapital und Arbeit. His drama, Franz von Sickingen, published in 1859, is a work of no poetic value.

The best authority on Lassalle’s life and writings is George Brandes’s Danish work, Ferdinand Lassalle (German translation, Berlin, 1877). See also Laveleye, Le socialisme contemporain, Paris, 1881; Fortnightly Review, 1869; Contemporary Review, 1881. There is already a considerable literature on his love affair and death:—Meine Beziehungen zu F. Lassalle, by Helene von Racowitza, a very strange book; BnthMllungen über das tragische Lebensende F. Lassalle's by B. Becker; Im Anschluss an die Memoiren der H. von Racowitza, by A. Kutschbach; and an English and Italian novel.

The numerous works and essays published by Lassen during half a century of unremitting labour, cover a wide field of Oriental research, and afford ample evidence of the thorough accuracy of his scholarship and the comprehensiveness of his learning. In 1829-31 he brought out, in conjunction with Schlegel, a critical annotated edition of the Hitopαdesα, the now well-known manual of political ethics in the form of fables, interspersed with moral maxims. The appearance of this edition marks the starting-point of the critical study of the Sanskrit literature. At the same time Lassen assisted his teacher and friend in editing and translating the first two cantos of the epic Râmâyana (1829-38). In 1832 he brought out the text of the first act of Bhavabhûti’s drama, Mâlatîrnâdhava, and a complete edition, with a Latin translation, of the Sânkhya-kârikâ, one of the chief works of the Sânkhya philosophy. In 1837 followed his edition and translation of Jayadeva’s charming lyrical drama, Gitagovinda, and his Institutiones linguae Pracritieae, which still forms the standard work on the popular dialects of the Indian dramas. His Anthologia Sanscritica, which came out the following year, contained several hitherto unpublished texts, and did much to stimulate the study of Sanskrit in German universities, where, indeed, it continues to be used, new editions of it having been published by Gildemeister in 1865 and 1868. In 1845 Lassen brought out a new and improved edition of Schlegel’s text and translation of the famous philosophical episode ofthe Mahdbhdrata, the “Bhagavadgîtâ.” He did not, however, 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 fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes (7 vols., 1837-50), started and conducted by him,— the first three volumes in conjunction with Ewald and Rodiger,— 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 his work Die altpersischen Keilinschriften von Persepolis (1836) he first made known the true character of the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions, thereby anticipating, by one month, Bumoufs Mémoire on the same subject, while Major (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 complete 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 his important essay, Zur Geschichte der griechischen und indo-scylhischen Könige in Baktrien, Kabul, und Indien (1838). He likewise 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, with which his name will always be inseparably connected—his Indische Alterthumskunde. In this work—completed in four volumes, published respectively in 1847 (2d ed., 1867), 1849 (2d 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 earliest times down to Mohammedan invasion, was worked up by him into a connected historical account. Only those acquainted with Indian history and literature, where nothing is fixed, can realize the enormous difficulty of the task; but in spite of much that may turn out to be erroneous, and in spite of still more that is, and from the nature of the subject must always be, uncertain and hypothetical, there can be no doubt that Lassen has laid in this work a solid foundation for future Indian historical and antiquarian research.