e English-French materialism of the
preceding century. This was embarrassing for followers of Hegel, who had
been taught to regard the material as the mere expression of the Idea.
Feuerbach relieved them from the contradiction. He grasped the question
boldly and threw the Hegelian abstraction completely to one side. His
book, "Wesen des Christenthums," in which his ideas were set forth,
became immediately popular, and an English translation, which was widely
read, was made of it by George Eliot under the title of "Essence of
Christianity."

Engels is by no means grudging of expressions of appreciation with
regard to this work, and its effects both upon himself and the educated
world in general. This "unendurable debt of honor" paid, however, he
proceeds to attack the idealistic humanitarianism which Feuerbach had
made the basis and sanction of his ethical theories.

Although Feuerbach had arrived at the materialistic conclusion, he
expressed himself as unable to accept materialism as a doctrine. He
says that as far as the past is concerned he is a materialist, but, for
the future, he is not so--"Backward I am in agreement with the
materialists, forward not"--a statement which impels Engels to examine
the materialism of the eighteenth century, which he finds purely
mechanical, without any conception of the universe as a process, and
therefore utterly inadequate for the philosophic needs of the period at
which Feuerbach wrote; for by that time the advance of science, and the
greater powers of generalization, arising from patient experimentation,
and the development of the evolutionary theory, had rendered the
eighteenth century views evidently absurd.

The "vulgarising peddlers" (vulgarisirenden Hausirer) come in for a
great deal of contempt at the hands of Engels. These were the popular
materialists--"the blatant atheists," who, without scientific knowledge
and gifted with mere oratory or a popular style of writing, used every
advance of science as a weapon of attack upon the Creator and popular
religion. Engels sneers at these as not being scientists at all, but
mere tradesmen dealing in pseudo-scientific wares. He calls their
occupation a trade, a business (Geschaeft). Of the same class was that
host of secularist lecturers who at one time thronged the lecture
platforms of the English-speaking countries and of whom Bradlaugh and
Ingersoll were in every way the best representatives. These secularists
have now ceased