cannot read this word, “revolution,” without conjuring up before his fancy the brandishing of pitchforks.  But such is not the meaning of the word in its scientific use, and the consistent use of the term in my pamphlet might have apprised the public prosecutor of the fact that the term is there employed in its alternative, scientific signification.  So, for instance, I speak of the development of the territorial principality as a “revolutionary” phenomenon.

And so again, on the other hand, I expressly declare that the peasant wars, which, assuredly, were sufficiently garnished with violence and bloodshed,—­I declare these wars to have been a movement which was revolutionary only in the imagination of those who participated in them, whereas they were in reality not a revolutionary, but a reactionary movement.

The progress of industry which took place in the sixteenth century, on the contrary, I repeatedly and constantly characterize as a “really and veritably revolutionary fact” (page 7), although no sword was drawn on its account.  Likewise I characterize (page 7) the invention of the spinning jenny in 1775 as a radical and effectual revolution.

Is this an abuse of language, or am I hereby introducing a novel use of words in making use of the term “revolution” in this sense,—­in that I apply it to peaceful developments and deny it to sanguinary disturbances!

The elder Schelling says (Untersuchungen ueber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, Vol.  VII, p. 351):  “The happy thought of making freedom the all in all of Philosophy has not only made the human intellect free as regards its own motives and effected a greater change in this science in all directions than any earlier revolution,” etc.  The elder Schelling, at least, does not, like the public prosecutor’s fancy, see pitchforks flashing before his eyes at the sound of the word “revolution.”  Applying the word, as he does, to the effects wrought by a philosophical principle, he takes it, as I do, in a sense which has no relation whatever to physical violence.

What, then, is the scientific meaning of this word “revolution,” and how does revolution differ from reform?  Revolution means transmutation, and a revolution is, accordingly, accomplished whenever, by whatever means, with or without shock or violence, an entirely new principle is substituted for what is already in effect.  A reform, on the other hand, is effected in case the existing situation is maintained in point of principle, but with a more humane, more consequent or juster working out of this principle.  Here, again, it is not a question of the means.  A reform may be effected by means of insurrection and bloodshed, and a revolution may be carried out in piping times of peace.  The peasant wars were an attempt at compelling a reform by force of arms.  The development of industry was a full-blown revolution, accomplished in the most peaceable manner; for in this latter case an entirely new and novel principle was put in the place of the previously existing state of affairs.  Both these ideas are developed at length and with great pains in the pamphlet under consideration.