The Monistic Conception of History by G. V. Plechanoff (part II) (1927)

From the January 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Plechanoff’s Famous Work now translated.]

Link to Part I

Part II.

Thesis : Man and his opinion is the result of the environment; especially of social environment. This is the inevitable conclusion from Locke’s main principle : the non-existence of innate ideas.

Antithesis : The environment with all its attributes is the result of opinions. This is the inevitable conclusion from the historical philosophy of the French materialists : c’est l’opinion qui gouverne le monde.

From these fundamental contradictions others followed, as, for instance, these :

Thesis : Man holds to be good those social relations that are useful to him; he considers as bad those that are harmful for him. The opinions of men are then determined by their interests : “L’opinion chez un peuple est toujours determinés par un interêt dominant,” says Suard. This is not a logical inference from Locke, it is really a plain repetition of his words, “no innate practical principles . . . virtue generally approved not because innate, but because profitable . . . good and evil . . . are nothing but pleasure and pain to us.” [1]

Antithesis : Certain relations seem to men to be good or bad in relation to the general system of their opinions. In the words of Suard every person loves, supports and justifies only that which he thinks useful for him, (Ne veut n’aime n’approuve que ce qu’il croit être utile), consequently, everything depends upon opinions.

Thesis : It is a great mistake to think that religious morality, for instance, the commandment about loving one’s neighbour, has in any way helped the moral alleviation of men. Such commandments, as ideas in general, are powerless against men. Ideas depend entirely upon the social environment and social relations. [2]

Antithesis : Historical experience shows that “que l’opinions sacrées furent la source véritable des maux du genre humain,” and this seems true, because if opinions in general rule the world, then false opinions will rule in the manner of blood-thirsty tyrants.

It would be quite easy to prolong the list of such contradictions of the French materialists, which some of our moderns inherited from them, but this would be superfluous. Let us rather examine the general character of these contradictions.

There are contradictions and contradictions. When, for instance, Mr. V. V. [3] contradicts himself in every line. His logical sins can have no other value than that of a “human document.” The future historian of Russian literature, will, in showing these contradictions, ponder over the social-psychological problem—how is it that so many readers did not detect contradictions that are so evident? But there are contradictions of another kind; these are the kind that do not put to sleep human thought, do not detain its development, but stimulate it to progress. The impetus for further development that they give is often so strong, that in the last analysis they are often, in spite of their contradictions, of more value than the logically perfect theories. About such contradictions Hegel said: “Der Widerspruch ist das Fortleitende” (contradictions lead forward). Of this kind are the contradictions of eighteenth century French materialism.

Let us examine their main contradiction. Human opinions are determined by their environment; the environment is determined by opinions. We can say about this what Kant said about his antinomies, the thesis is just as true as the antithesis. There can really be no doubt that human opinions (convictions) are determined by their social environment. But, it is just as true that no people will subject itself to a social order that is in contradiction to all its opinions. The people will rebel against it, and rebuild it according to their convictions. We must admit then, that the antithesis is also true. The question then is how can two theses, both true, contradict each other? There is a very simple explanation of it. They contradict each other only because we look at them from the wrong angle, an angle which makes it appear that if one is true the other must be false. If we once find the true standpoint from which to look at them, the contradictions will disappear. Each of the propositions will take on a new form. We shall find that each one does not contradict the other, but adds to its completeness, or rather that each conditions the other; that if one is untrue, the other must also be untrue. How can we find such a standpoint?

Let us take one instance. It was often repeated, especially in the eighteenth century, that the form of government in each country is determined by the morals of the respective people. This is really true. When the old republican morality disappeared in Rome, the republic was changed into a monarchy. But on the other hand, it was not less often said, that the morality of a people is determined by their form of government. This is also true. And really, where could the Romans of the time of Heligobalus get their republican morals? Is it not clear that the morals of the people of the Roman Empire had to be just the opposite of the morals of the time of the Republic? If this is clear, we come to the general conclusion that the forms of government do determine the morals of the people, and the morals of the people do determine the forms of government. Surely we must have reached this conclusion through some mistake. What then is our mistake? Ponder as much as you will, you will not find any mistake in either of the two propositions. They are both above reproach. Usually in such cases people content themselves with the principle of mutualism : Morals influence the constitution, the constitution influences morals—everything is as clear as day, and people who are dissatisfied with this solution are, of course, “narrow-minded.” This is just how our intelligentzia look at this question. They look at social life from the standpoint of mutualism; each aspect of life influences all others, and is influenced by all others. Only such a view is considered worthy of a thinking “Sociologist,” and whoever, like the Marxists, looks for deeper causes of social development, does not see the complexity of social life. The French “Enlightener” were also inclined towards this standpoint. The most systematic intellects among them (we do not include in this Rousseau who had little in common with the “Enlighteners”) did not go further than this. Thus, for instance, it is to be found in the famous Grandeur et Décadence des Romains of Montesquieu and also in his De I’Esprit de Lois. This is, of course, in itself a right standpoint. Mutual influences undoubtedly exist between all sides of social life. Unfortunately this standpoint does not explain much, for the simple reason that it does not say anything about the origin of these mutually influencing forces. If the form of government pre-supposes those morals which it influences, it is clear that it cannot be their first cause. The same must be said about the morals. The political order which they influence cannot be their creators. We must, in order to find a way out of this tangle, find that historical factor that is responsible for both the morals of a certain people and their political system and thereby created the possibility of their mutual influence.

The French materialists were greatly mistaken, when in contradiction to their usual view of history, they affirmed that ideas have no significance whatever, because environment is everything; not less mistaken is their usual view that declares opinions to be the fundamental cause for the existence of a certain social environment. There can be no doubt that there is a process of mutual influences between ideas and environment. But scientific investigation cannot stop at the recognition of this mutual ism, because mutualism does not explain really the social facts. In order to under stand the history of humanity, i.e., on the one hand, the history of opinions, and, on the other, the history of social relations, it is necessary to rise above mutualism; we must find, if we can, that factor that determines both the development of the social environment and the development of ideas. The task of nineteenth century social science was to find this factor.

The world is governed by opinions. But opinions also have a history. What determines their history? “The spread of Education,” answered some as early as the seventeenth century. The “Enlighteners” of the eighteenth century held fast to this opinion. The more talented among them, however, were themselves dissatisfied with their own answer. Helvetius remarks that the development of knowledge is controlled by certain laws. He even writes a very important essay to explain the social and intellectual development of man as a result of his material wants. He has not succeeded in this; for many reasons he could not at that time succeed. It has remained for the thinkers of the next century to continue the work of the French materialists.

1 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. I, Ch. 3; Vol. II, Ch. 20, 21, 28.

2 This proposition is more than once expressed in the Système de la Nature of Holbach. The same is also expressed by Helvetius.

3 V. V. was one of the theoreticians of Naradnichestvo, and affirmed that capitalism would not develop in Russia as it has developed in Western Europe.

(To be continued.)

Translated by H. Kantorovitch for "Modern Quarterly".

The Monistic Conception of History by G. V. Plechanoff (part I) (1926)

From the December 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Plechanoff’s Famous Work now translated.]

Materialism is the direct opposite of idealism. Idealism strives to explain all phenomena of nature, all the properties of matter, through one or the other of the properties of the spirit. Materialism does just the opposite. It tries to explain all psychical phenomena through some properties of matter, through the organisation of the human, or living, organism. All those philosophers for whom matter is the prime factor belong to the materialist group, all those that hold spirit as the prime factor are idealists. This is all that can be said about materialism in general, for on its foundations various structures have been erected, materialism of one epoch has an entirely different aspect from that of another epoch. 

Materialism and idealism are the two most important tendencies in philosophy. It is true, together with these two, there have always been some kind of dualistic systems that recognised spirit and matter as separate and independent substances. But dualism could never satisfactorily reply to the inevitable question,—how could two substances, separate and independent as they are, influence each other? This is why all the foremost and the deepest thinkers have been inclined to monism, i.e., to explain all phenomena through the help of some one fundamental principle. Every profound idealist as well as every profound materialist is a monist. In this there is no difference, for instance, between Berkeley and Holbach. The first was a confirmed idealist, the second was a no less confirmed materialist, but both were monists; both understood the impossibility of dualism.

In the first half of our century [1] idealistic monism reigned; in the second half—in science, with which materialism has since united—materialistic monism, gained the upper hand, though a materialism not always open and frank.

Here we do not need to give a whole history of materialism. [2] It will be enough for us to observe its development beginning from the second half of the last century (18th) and even in this period, its principal tendencies will suffice for us. We will take up the materialistic views of Holbach, Helvetius and their co-workers.

The materialists of this school conducted a heated polemic against the official thinkers of the time, who, professing to follow Descartes, whom they scarcely understood, argued that man has certain innate ideas,—ideas that are independent of experience. Combating this view, the French materialists, only defended the views of J. Locke, who, as early as the end of the 17th century, taught that there are no innate principles. But in explaining Locke’s philosophy the materialists have given it a more momentous character, touching on problems which the well-bred English liberal ignored. The French materialists were undaunted sensualists ; they looked on all psychic activities of man as transformation of sensations. It would be useless here to inquire how far their arguments are good in the light of contemporary science. It is obvious that the French Materialists of that time did not know what every high schoolboy knows to-day. It is enough to remember only the views of Holbach on physics and chemistry —though he was supreme in the science of his day. The great merit of the French materialists was that they thought deeply, and in correspondence with the science of their time. This is all that we can demand from any thinker. There is, of course, nothing strange in the fact that science has advanced far beyond the views of the French materialist. It is more important to remember that those who fought against the materialists were even then behind the science of the time. It is true the historians, of philosophy usually put the views of Kant as antithetical to the views of the materialists. It would certainly be strange to reproach Kant with ignorance. It would, nevertheless, not be hard to show, that both Kant and the materialists stood on the same fundamental principles, but used them in different ways, and, therefore, came to different conclusions. This was in accordance with the different social environment that influenced their respective lives and thoughts. We know that people who believe the historians on their bare words, will find this opinion paradoxical. We have no opportunity of proving the truth of this statement here; but we do not refuse proof if our opponents demand it. [3]

It is well known, however, that the French materialists viewed all psychic activity of men, as transformation of sensation (sensations transformées). To view psychic activity from this standpoint means to recognise that all conceptions and feelings of man are results of the influence of his environment. This the French materialists recognised. They continually, hotly and categorically, declared that man with his views and feelings is what his environment makes turn, his environment being in the first place, nature, and the second place, society. “L’homme est tout educationé,” declares Helvetius. By education he understands the sum total of social environment. This view of man as a product of his environment was the chief theoretical basis of the new demands of the French materialists. If man is dependent on his environment, if the environment is responsible for every trait in his character, it is also responsible for his defects. If you would fight against his defects, you must change his environment accordingly, and primarily his social environment, because nature creates man as neither good nor bad. Place him in a reasonable social position under such conditions that his self-preservation instincts do not necessarily drive him to fight every other man, among conditions in which the interests of the individual correspond with interests of the whole society—and virtue will triumph. (Vertu) virtue is not something to be made possible through a reasonable reconstruction of social relations. Thanks to the conservatives and reactionaries of the last century (18th), the morality of the French materialists is still thought of as the morality of egoism, while they themselves defined it more correctly when they declared that their morality entirely merges in politics.

The teaching that the spiritual world of man, is the result of his environment often brought the French materialists to results entirely unexpected by them. Thus, for instance, they often declared that the opinions of man have no influence whatever on his conduct, and, therefore, no matter what ideas society holds it cannot change its fate in the least. We shall later show where they were mistaken. At present let us examine the other side of French materialism.

If the ideas of every man are determined by his environment, then the ideas of the human race must be determined by the evolution of the social environment, by the history of social relations. If we desire to paint a picture of the progress of human reason, and if we do not limit ourselves to the question “how,” but also ask “why,” we must begin from the history of the environment; from the history of the evolution of social relations. The main point, at least at the beginning, would then be to discover the laws of social evolution. The French materialists approached this problem, but could not solve it, or even put the question correctly.

Whenever they began to speak about historical development of society, they forgot their sensualistic view on man in general, and together with “Enlighteners” of their time, declared that the world (i.e., social relations of men) was ruled by opinions (c’est l’opinion qui gouverne le monde). This is the basic contradiction of the 18th century materialism.

1 This was written in 1894. Translator’s Note.

2 A few years later Plechanoff published “A Contribution to the History of Materialism.” Translator’s Note.

3 Plechanoff has proved this in a series of brilliant polemical essays, against Bernstein, Conrad Schmidt, and other neo-Kantians, “Neue Zeit,” 1898-1899.

(To be continued.)

Translated by H. Kantorovitch for "Modern Quarterly".

Is Marxism a Class Ethic? (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE ETHICS OF MARXISM (4) (See Parts 1, 2 & 3)

Marx never denied that an order was to be found in history. He did deny that the order was a non-human or teleological one. He did not deny determinism in history. He denied pre-determinism or fatalism. The ends in history he thought are not realised merely because they are willed by men, but he insisted that the process of social development has no ends to realise which are not willed by men. He states: —

History does nothing—it possesses no colossal riches; it fights no fight; it is rather man—real living man who acts, possesses and fights in everything. It is by no means "History" which uses men as a means to carry out its ends as if it were a person apart; rather History is nothing but the activity of man in pursuit of his ends.

Marx sought an explanation for men's historical activity. His own historical insight discovered it was not in what men think about themselves—not in the Slogans and battle cries of "contending interests"—not in their abstract ideas or in the ideals they proclaim, but in concrete human needs and the social situation out of which these needs arise. It is these needs—albeit they have taken on the character of class needs since the passing of primitive society—which constitute the dynamic of historic activity. It is these needs which set men their problems and which give them the impulse and will to overcome them.

Class Needs and Ethics
Along with the development of the material forces of Society, goes the development of human needs, quantitatively and qualitatively. It is these human needs which lie at the base of the objective possibilities of social development and which men through concerted social action seek to realise. In a class society such action is class action. Social need are not subjective or personal. They are objective and as integral a part of the social situation as the social relations of production themselves. From these social needs—in class society they take the form of class needs—arise the theories and ideals which constitute theoretical responses to concrete social demands. Marx never denied the influence of men's beliefs on their social activity. What he made explicit was the historical impact which made "ruling" ideas projections of class interests and under what conditions these ideas grew, flourished and declined. For Marx no study of social behaviour had any serious claims to objectivity which failed to take into account the refracting nature of class interests.

It should be clear then that one cannot understand the ethical values of an epoch without reference to concrete social needs. Marx opposed the classless morality of Kant with its categorical imperatives and "private guilts" for that reason: just as he opposed the morality of Feuerbach and Hess, who having got rid of the divine attributes of God, then transferred these attributes to men and instead of worshipping an abstract deity, worshipped an abstract humanity. While ethics and human needs are inseparable in class society, they take on the character of class needs. A genuine ethic is never then a question of negative moral injunctions but basically a series of positive demands and in a class society they are class demands. From this standpoint, Marxism is frankly a class ethic. Moreover, in the light of its own assumptions about extant society it is a revolutionary ethic. It rejects a timeless, placeless morality with no specific application to concrete circumstances because it hides from men the real nature of the conditions which give rise to their social problems.

Humanism and Class Needs
Marx's criticism of the current humanism, too, is the refusal to relate humanistic assumptions with the objective tendencies of social development and hence the failure to see that existing social relations of production determine the social existence and the conditions of life for the vast majority and that the inhuman consequences of present day society are bound up with a form of social organisation—Capitalism.

Marx never grounded his theories in the belief of a pre-established harmony of human nature based in alleged pre-established natural or divine laws. He saw men as they actually were in the work-a-day world—a world which itself had been the outcome of an actual historic process. The fact that since the advent of private property, history had been class history and individuals, class individuals was not something to be deplored, but something to be understood. Only in that way was it possible for the real nature of the social problems to be grasped and surmounted.

One cannot even begin to talk of the essential unity of men from a so-called classless ethic, in a class world which cuts them in half and where the ties between men take the alienated form of exchange relations. It is no answer to say as some humanists do that Socialism would be of ultimate benefit to the exploiting capitalists as well as the exploited worker. Such humanists see the working class in the vague category of the underdog. But the needs of the working class are not merely the alleviation of distress or poverty but the outcome of its economic function as a class, unshared by the privileged group. It is the capitalist division of labour which mutilates the worker, not the capitalist, and leaves at least the latter as an unproductive whole and not as in the case of the former a fragmentised productive appendage. It is Capitalist Society which has stripped its producers of their productive and most basic human capacities. "Denied the growth of the powers that slumber them" and impoverished their individuality. The most urgent class need of the wealth producers is not a social and moral reevaluation within the framework of existing society or a mere quantitative addition to current class-conditioned existence. What their working class human nature must demand if it is to attain to a truly human level is the abolition of the inhuman consequences of the present state of affairs and the integration of the human personality into a collective social whole.

Marx refused to disassociate ethics and ideals from economic development and the function of social classes. A long historical development had transferred all productive processes to the numerically largest section of the capitalist community: yet this section as a class is unfree so long as a private property system with its appropriate division of labour separates the produce of their labour from them and places it in other hands as a means of class domination, and as a corollary to this confines their human powers within the narrow and nihilistic orbit of capitalist production. But as the sole productive class they alone have the active and hence dynamic function capable of transforming the existing social situation. Nevertheless, they can only emerge from class unfreedom to classless liberty by becoming conscious of the path they must follow.

It should be clear then that for Marx the "what ought to be" must be functionally related to the "what is"; that is why any genuine ethic must be a demand for something capable of realisation. By this criterion the Marxist Ethic is richer in human content than any other set of contemporary values.

Class Ideals and Social Reality
Marx refused to accept some absolute scale of values which claimed an above the struggle neutrality. In this way, are we to understand his refusal to talk in the name of "Humanity," "Justice," "Freedom." For Marx, the abstract character of these categories could be shown by asking, Whose humanity? Justice for Whom? and Freedom for What? and in a class society, the answers will always reveal a class standpoint. In a changing world, men's needs cannot remain static: nor for that reason can their ethical values. As the social environment develops, so do men's needs, and with them their concrete ethical demands.

Marx has been ignorantly accused of denying that ideals are a valid part of social reality. On the contrary, he held that morality was as old as man himself. There have been no human societies without ideals and moral values of some kind. What Marx went on to investigate was the social source of these ideals. On whose behalf were they fought; what expectations did they seek to justify?His answer was that this could be most fruitfully found in the study of class relations. Ruling ideas—Social ideals—are, said Marx, only historically effective when they express material (class) interests. This explains why some ideas triumph and others fail. It explains why ruling ideas are modified. Why sometimes these "material interests" demand more liberty, more democracy, more equality and sometimes a restriction of these things. Ideas play an important role in history. Their significance can, however, only be evaluated by seeing the integral connection of ideas with human needs and interests. But Marx went further by investigating what specific class interests are crucial. What is the theoretical and ideal formulation of these class demands? How do they establish themselves as ideologies? In this way did Marx formulate one of the prime canons of Historical Materialism.

Need for Class Assertion
Marx did not glorify selfishness or unselfishness. He never treated them as abstract qualities, but as concrete expressions of social behaviour in a given social context. To the accepted morality, working class demands, strikes, etc., often appear as selfish forms of class assertion, but it is only through class assertion that some decent existence can be won for its members. Without class assertion, the workers would forfeit their own human claims; to give up their struggle for maintaining or improving their living standards would lead to social and material deterioration as well as moral abasement. That is why Marx was consistently bitter against those who sought to nullify working class action by pleas and brotherly love, and praying for the "Soul" of the "Enemy." In present society, self-assertion not self-denial must be the watershed of working class morality.

Mr. Taylor (Is Marxism a Humanism*) sees the Social Revolution as an explosive force. That may well be so in that it blows up the base and superstructure of the old society. It will not be, as he seems to imagine, a blind explosive force whose parts will be picked up and pieced together by an elite of "Social Engineers" into a new social design. Whatever explosive impact the Social Revolution produces, it will first take place in the consciousness of men and will include their skills. techniques and Social experiences. A new Society can only be built by "new men." The Social Revolution will mark their emergence.

It is amazing that Marx's critics should have so misunderstood his conception of men. That the line of historical development leads to man's conscious control of all social agencies was central to his humanistic assumptions. For him the abolition of classes would see the emergence of the classless individual freely associating with others of his kind. What he demanded above all else was the abolition of a state of affairs whose productive agencies crippled, even annihilated the essential human elements of personality. An alleged Social Revolution which subjugated and physically destroyed members of another class as well as workers would have filled him with abhorrence.

A man is known by what he fights for. Mars all his life fought for the removal of oppression and inequality. His goal was Socialised Humanity. His concern for the individual was evidenced as early as his doctor's dissertation, and later his attacks on censorship and the filching of peasants' wood rights. To suggest as Mr. Taylor does that his political doctrines and the ethical values associated with them have given in any way theoretical support for Soviet Society and unfree Soviet man, is either gross misrepresentation or misunderstanding.

In any case both are indefensible.

In the next issue we shall conclude the series on Marxist Ethics by discussing the concept—NECESSITY AND FREEDOM.

Ted Wilmott

* See June, July and August Socialist Standard 

Leaders of the Blind (1960)

From the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is the first of a series of articles reappraising books which were part of almost every socialist's library in the early part of this century.

Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind, by Arthur M. Lewis: published in Chicago by Charles H. Kerr and Company in 1908.

This is a volume of ten lectures delivered by Mr. Lewis in America before the first world war. Mr. Lewis claims to be a Socialist, but is really, like so many others who make the same claim, only a Social Democrat (in British terms, a Labourite). Nevertheless, this book is full of interest to any Socialist.

It deals with ten politicians, writers, and philosophers. Some of them are now forgotten; a few people these days have heard of Benjamin Kidd and Professor Richard Ely. Yet it is instructive to be reminded of some of these erstwhile worthies. Bishop Spalding, for example, speaking of the contrast between rich and poor, the bishop had this to say:

That the cause of this disparity of condition is moral rather than economic whoever observes may see; and this fact gives emphasis to the great truth that all real amelioration in the lot of human beings depends on religious, moral and intellectual conditions. Money does not make a miser rich nor its lack a true man poor . . . For the most fortunate men life is full of difficulties and troubles: for the poorest it may be filled with light, peace and blessedness.
In a Socialist State, in which the universal ideal is that of physical well-being and comfort, the sublimer moods which make saints, heroes, and men of genius possible would no longer be called forth.

So it is not only ourselves who have had to listen to bishops telling us that we are poor because of "moral conditions," and that the poorest may be "filled with blessedness," whatever that means: our forefathers had to put up with this cant as well. On the other hand, the spectacle of bishops, who are notoriously well-provided in point of "physical well-being and comfort" even to non-bishops, must have been as entertaining then as it is now.

Other of Mr. Lewis's subjects are remembered now only as historical curiosities. One such is Henry George, who proposed that landlords should be made to turn all their rent over to the state. This would give the state a sufficient income, and no one else would then have to pay any taxes. Henry George's Land Tax movement, to which reformers flocked in the last part of the nineteenth century, was of course the outcome of the reluctance of the capitalists to pay for the running of the countries which they ruled. As Marx said of earlier proposals of the same kind: "This is the frank expression of hatred which the industrial capitalist entertains for the landowner, who seems to him a useless or superfluous entity in the scheme of bourgeois or capitalist production." But the only people who can pay for the running of a capitalist country are the capitalists: and Henry George's land tax schemes have been exploded for many years.

Another curiosity is Cesare Lombroso. It is astounding now to recall that he became famous for his theories that the causes of crime were in physical build: that men became murderers and thieves because of the shape of their skulls or the colour of their hair. He wrote books purporting, for example, to show that "prostitutes have smaller skulls, lighter hair, darker eyes, heavier bodies, and shorter feet than normal women."

Thomas Carlyle

It is not now necessary to argue against Lombroso. But other controversies touched on by Mr. Lewis are still raging with undiminished fury. The chapter on Thomas Carlyle is largely concerned with the "Great Man Theory," which still has its devotees. This theory, in Carlyle's words, holds that "Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here." It is the leaders, the politicians, the inventors (say the apologists of this school) who go ahead of mankind, who mould history according to their ideas, who change the entire course of a nation's progress by their sudden, brilliant decisions. For example, in Carlyle's view the whole Reformation depended on Luther. If he had recanted when the Roman Catholic authorities summoned him to appear before them, the entire Reformation (in his view) would never have occurred. But to believe this one has to ignore the fact that the ruling class of much of Europe was on the verge of revolt over the revenues that the Catholic Church drained away from their no subjects: no ruling class is content with half the surplus value of its subjects, if it thinks there is the faintest chance of getting it all. The atmosphere was that of a powder magazine. When a powerful class is ready for revolt, any spark will set it off: if Luther had not provided the spark in this case, then somebody else would. 

Mr. Lewis also deals with the case of invention and discovery. The "Great Man Theory" says that inventors and discoverers are men who independently strike out in front of the rest of mankind, and by the sheer force of intellect or character mark out the road which the human race is to follow. But this is to go sadly wide of the facts. When the material conditions, and the productive processes, of a certain country have reached a stage where a new step is both desirable and possible, then inventors will do the rest. If one fails, another will succeed. Very often an invention or discovery is made independently by two or more people. For example, the telescope was invented independently by Jansen, by Lippershey, and by Galileo in the space of two years. Oxygen was discovered independently by Priestley and by a Swedish village apothecary. The nebular theory of the universe was discovered both by Kant and by Laplace. The planet Neptune was discovered by Adams and by Leverrier. The principle of evolution by natural selection was discovered by Darwin, and also, at the same time, by Alfred Russell Wallace. The materialist conception of history was discovered by both Marx and by Engels. These famous examples, along with other evidence, are marshalled skilfully by Mr. Lewis in this chapter.

Immanuel Kant

Another chapter which is worth careful reading is that on Kant. Kant was one of those philosophers who devoted themselves to endeavours to bolster up religion. Religious belief cannot be supported by reason, as religious apologists are often ready to admit. Why, then, should one believe what is not rational? A common theological answer is—Faith: you cannot reason out the existence of a God, but you must have Faith that he is there all the same. Which is much the same as saying, you cannot believe, but still you must believe.

This was the problem that Kant tackled. He started off by maintaining, in his Critique of Pure Reason, that we cannot see things as they really are, only as they appear to be. The two tools by which men understand the world, experience and reason, were thus written off. One suspects that this was because neither experience nor reason can support religious belief. Having cleared the ground, Kant then passed on to the question of how we can come to know the "eternal verities"—a phrase which usually includes religious belief. He had to find a source of knowledge independent of experience and reason. In his Critique of Practical Reason, he brings forward his answer: we must dive down inside our own consciousness, and there we will find the great necessary and universal truths. And what are these great and universal truths? Kant scrabbled around in his own consciousness, and came up with his own list. No prizes are offered for guessing what they were: a personal God, free will, and a future life were all there—all the usual rag-bag of religious beliefs.  One can imagine the howl of derision that would go up if a Socialist attempted to justify his beliefs with such transparent taradiddle: but because Kant supported the political and religious beliefs of the owning class, he was honoured as a great philosopher, and still is.

The beliefs of Kant, and the beliefs of Carlyle, are still held by many who support the present system of society. If only to read these two chapters it is worthwhile getting hold of this book.

Alwyn Edgar