ligion representing his
needs on the "ideological" field, he appears to be increasingly
desirous of releasing himself from the bands of any religion whatever,
and substituting in place of it practical ethics and the teachings of
science. Thus we are informed that five out of six of the working
classes of Berlin, who attend any Sunday meetings whatever, are to be
found in the halls of the Social Democratic Party, listening to the
lectures provided by that organization.

The revolutionary character of Feuerbach's philosophy is not maintained
in his ethic, which Engels declares with much truth to be no better than
that of his predecessors, as the basis on which it stands is no more
substantial. Feuerbach fails as a teacher of practical ethics; he is
smothered in abstraction and cannot attain to any reality.

With the last part of the work Engels abandons the task of criticising
Feuerbach, and proceeds to expound his own philosophy.

With absolute candor and modesty he gives Marx credit for the theory of
the materialistic conception of history, upon the enunciation and proof
of which he had himself worked almost incessantly ever since the first
idea of the theory had occurred to them, forty years prior to the time
when he wrote this work. The footnote to the first page of the fourth
part is the testimony of a collaborator to the genius of his
fellow-workman, an example of appreciation and modest self-effacement
which it would not be easy to match, and to which literary men who work
together are not over-prone. Nothing else could bear more eloquent
testimony to the loftiness of character and sincerity of purpose of
these two exiles.

The Marxian philosophy of history is clearly stated, and so fully
explained by Engels that there is no need to go over the ground again,
and there only remains to call attention to some of the modern
developments in the direction of rigidity of interpretation, and to the
exaggeration of the broad theory of the predominance of the economic
factor into a hard and fast doctrine of economic determinism.

When we examine the claims of Engels on behalf of the materialistic
doctrine it will be found that they are not by any means of such a
nature as to warrant the extreme conclusions of subsequent socialist
publicists and leaders. It must be remembered that the subject of the
influence of economic conditions on religious and political phenomena
has been closely examined of late years and continual