th we disarm it by
committing suicide." Here is a note of modernity which Engels was
hardly modern enough to appreciate and yet it was written before he
died.

Nietzsche, Tolstoy and a host of minor writers have all had their
fling at "eternal truths" and modern ideals. The battle has long since
rolled away from the ground on which Engels fought. His arguments on
the dialectic are commonplaces to-day which it would be a work of
supererogation to explain to anyone except the persistent victim of
Little Bethel. The world has come to accept them with the equanimity
with which it always accepts long disputed truths.

The sacred right of nationality for which men contended in Engels'
youth, as a direct consequence of political "eternal truths" has been
ruthlessly brushed aside. The philosopher talks of the shameful
spoliation of the smaller by the larger nations, a moral view of
commercial progress, which an age, grown more impatient of "eternal
truths" than Engels himself simply ignores, and moves on without a
qualm to the destruction of free governments in South Africa. Backward
and unprogressive peoples jeer, it is true, and thereby show their
political ineptitude, for even the American Republic, having freed the
negro under the banner of "eternal truth" annexes the Philippines and
raids Panama in defiance of it.

And so since the days of 1875 the world has come to accept the general
correctness of Engels' point of view.

The enemy which Engels was most anxious to dislodge was "mechanical
socialism," a naive invention of a perfect system capable of
withstanding the ravages of time, because founded upon eternal
principles of truth and justice. That enemy has now obeyed the law of
the dialectic and passed away. Nobody builds such systems, nowadays.
They have ceased their building however not in obedience to the
commands of Friedrich Engels but because the lapse of time and the
change in conditions have proved the dialectic to the revolutionist.
With the annihilation of "eternal truths," system building ceased to
be even an amusing pastime. The revolutionist has been revolutionized.
He no longer fancies that he can make revolutions. He knows better. He
is content to see that the road is kept clear so that revolutions may
develop themselves. Your real revolutionist, for example, puts no
obstacle in the path of the Trust, he is much too wise. He leaves that
to the corrosion of time and the development of his pet dialectic