Such is the logical framework on which this indictment must proceed.  This is the line of argument which avowedly or not, by logical necessity comes to expression in this indictment.

It is not I, but the public prosecutor speaking from the eminence of his curule chair, who proclaims to the working classes the awful doctrine:  You must hate and distrust.

It is not for me, it is for the public prosecutor to square himself with the bourgeoisie.

But what is my answer to the public prosecutor and his indictment which charges me with his own offense?

My answer is a four-fold one: 

In the first place a full recognition of the inadequacy or the viciousness of a given institution must arouse in any person of normal sensibility an enduring purpose to change such an institution, if possible, and the arousing of such an undying purpose in my hearers has necessarily been the aim of my scientific investigation, as it necessarily is the end of all scientific work.  But such a purpose, so long as it does not utter itself in an illegal manner, is absolutely unconstrained by law.  The like is true of all effort to arouse such a purpose, so long as it does not resort to illegal means.  But such a purpose to amend the shortcomings of any established arrangement, is by no means the same thing as hatred and contempt of the arrangement in question; since these shortcomings are a matter of historical growth, of historical necessity; since, indeed, they may even be, in effect, a factor in the work of liberation, and a factor of the gravest consequence and of the most beneficial effect for cultural growth.  Further reasons to the like effect have already been recited and I will not take up your time with their repetition and further development.  Here, then, is the first hiatus in the public prosecutor’s argument.

In the second place, if it actually follows in any given case that hatred and contempt is, for a normally constituted human being, the necessary consequence of a scientific knowledge of the facts, such hatred and contempt could by no means be laid under penalties by the legislator.

Whatever institution is so vicious that knowledge of it necessarily excites hatred and contempt, that institution should be hated and despised.

The legislator lays penalties upon such hatred and contempt as are but the effects produced by blind emotions and passions.  But he has not imposed penalties upon human reason and the moral constitution of man.  He consequently does not impose penalties upon hatred and contempt which are the necessary outcome of these two features of human nature.  The public prosecutor construes section 100 to the effect that the legislator has therein intended to prohibit the use of reason and proscribe the moral nature of man.  But such a purpose has not entered the thoughts of the law-giver.  No court will put such a construction upon the law as to make the legislator the avowed enemy