I would like to remind you that both assimilation and integration apply to the working classes in the nineteenth century, at least in Britain and also Germany. Like most outsider groups compared with the establishment, the working classes were treated more or less with the same kind of stigmatization as immigrant groups are treated today.

Of course you can more easily recognise the outsiders because they have a different skin color. But let us take for instance the relationship between the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority in America and the negroes. What is important here is that the negroes were the descendants from slaves and were excluded from power, while the white majority kept them at bay, kept them down, kept them where they are. If the negroes in the future became assimilated and acquired equal power access, if there were a black president, then many of these things would change.

Scientific modes of thought cannot be developed and become generally accepted unless people renounce their primary, unreflecting, and spontaneous attempt to understand all their experience in terms of its purpose and meaning for themselves. The development that led to more adequate knowledge and increasing control of nature was therefore, considered from one aspect, also a development toward greater self-control by men.

The heart of assimilation process of absorbing minorities lies in the self-image of a nation. There are, as you will know, big differences for instance between the self-image of the French and the English. And the Germans, in accordance with their rather chequered history, had at least in the past very little capacity for absorbing minorities.

The number of those who have to be assimilated to the majority is not too high. It remains small compared with the numbers of the majority. But there is one thing - and that is the main reason for this digression - that French and British have in common: to this day they have an immense pride in being French, in being British. The fact that in the meantime both have come down to earth a little has not yet affected their pride in their own nationality and the fact that, if I may express it that way, they are mutual admiration societies: how fine the British are, how fine the French are.

I have touched here on a problem that is masked if one speaks of racism. And that is the fact that the major differences between the established and outsiders group, which create tension and irritation, is not the form of the face or the skin color but the form of behavior: something learned. The form of behavior and feeling, of sentiment, is different in the immigrant groups from that of the established groups, and that may give rise to an enormous irritation.

When Benjamin Disraeli spoke of the 'two nations' in Britain he was perfectly right, only the working classes were not exactly a nation. But the gap in behavioral standards and in outlook, and of course in standards of living, were enormous. And in course of time, at least in countries such as Britain, the working classes more or less adopted and have become assimilated to the standards of the so-called 'gentle' classes. That is assimilation.The working class has hardly been able to govern, but they are no longer outsiders in relation to the state as they were before.