2. Somewhat later, the same gentleman "well-known through his fame" (to use Hegel's phrase) also felt himself compelled to reply to my preface to Volume III -- after it was published in Italian in the first number of _Rassegna_, in 1895. The reply is printed in the _Riforma Sociale_ of February 25, 1895. After having lavished upon me the inevitable (and therefore doubly repulsive) adulation, he states that he never thought of filching for himself Marx's credit for the materialist conception of history. He acknowledged it as early as 1885 -- to wit, quite incidentally in a magazine article.

But in return he passes over it in silence all the more stubbornly precisely where it is due -- that is, in his book on the subject, where Marx is mentioned for the first time on page 129, and then merely in connection with small landed property in France. And now he bravely declares that Marx is not at all the originator of this theory; if Aristotle had not already suggested it, Harrington undoubtedly proclaimed it as early as 1656, and it had been developed by a Pleiad of historians, politicians, jurists and economists long before Marx. All of which is to be read in the French edition of Loria's book. In short, the perfect plagiarist. After I have made it impossible for him to brag any more with plagiarisms from Marx, he boldly maintains that Marx adorns himself with borrowed plumes just as he himself does.

Of my other attacks, Loria takes up one concerning his assertion that Marx never planned to write a second or indeed a third volume of _Capital_.

"And now Engels replies triumphantly by throwing the second and third volumes at me... excellent! And I am so pleased with these volumes, to which I owe so much intellectual enjoyment, that never was a victory so dear to me as today this defeat is -- if it really is a defeat. But is it actually? Is it really true that Marx wrote, with the intention of publication, this mixture of disconnected notes that Engels, with pious friendship, has compiled? Is it really permissible to assume that Marx... confided the coronation of his work and his system to these pages? Is it indeed certain that Marx would have published that chapter on the average rate of profit, in which the solution, promised for so many years, is reduced to the most dismal mystification, to the most vulgar playing with phrases? It is at least permissible to doubt it.... That proves, it seems to me, that Marx, after publishing his magnificent (splendido) book, did not intend to provide it with a successor, or else wanted to leave the completion of the gigantic work to his heirs, outside his own responsibility."

So it was written on p.267. Heine could not speak any more contemptuously of his philistine German public than in the words: "The author finally gets used to his public as if it were a reasonable being". What must the illustrious Loria think his public is?

In conclusion, another load of praise comes pouring down on my unlucky self. In this, our Sganarelle puts himself on a par with Balaam, who came to curse, but whose lips bubbled forth "words of blessing and love" against his will. For the good Balaam was distinguished by the fact that he rode upon an ass that was more intelligent than its master. This time, Balaam evidently left his ass at home.

3. In medieval Germany (and England), the mark (or march) was a piece of land held in common by the freemen of a community.