ed from a study of history,
and for us, that in the realm of history the old materialism is proved
to be false, since it fixes active ideal impulses as final causes
instead of seeking that which lies behind them, that which is the
impulse of these impulses. The lack of logical conclusion does not lie
in the fact that ideal impulses are recognized, but in this, that there
is no further examination into the more remote causes of their activity.
The philosophy of history, on the contrary, particularly as it was
treated by Hegel, recognizes that the ostensible and even the real
motives of the men who figure in history, are by no means the final
causes of historical events, that behind these events stand other moving
forces which must be discovered; but it seeks these forces not in
history itself, it imports them mostly from the outside, from
philosophical ideology, into history. Instead of explaining the history
of ancient Greece from its own inner connection, Hegel, for example,
explains it solely as if it were nothing but the working out of a
beautiful individuality, the realization of art, as such. He says much
about the old Greeks that is fine and profound, but this does not
prevent our dissatisfaction, now-a-days, with such an explanation, which
is mere phraseology.

If, therefore, we set out to discover the impelling forces, which,
acknowledged, or unacknowledged, and for the most part unacknowledged,
stand behind historical figures, and constitute the true final impulses
of history, we cannot consider so much the motives of single
individuals, however pre-eminent, as those which set in motion great
masses, entire nations, and again, whole classes of people in each
nation, and this, too, not in a momentarily flaring and quickly dying
flame, but to enduring action culminating in a great historical change.
To establish the great impelling forces which play upon the brains of
the acting masses and their leaders, the so-called great men, as
conscious motives, clear or unclear, directly or ideologically or even
in a supernatural form, that is the only method which can place us on
the track of the law controlling history as a whole, as well as at
particular periods and in individual lands. All that sets men in motion
must act upon their minds, but the force which acts upon the brain
depends very largely upon circumstances. The workers have by no means
become reconciled to the machine power of the capitalists although they