. He
sees the contradiction concealed in the system which apparently
triumphs, and in the triumph of the system he sees also the triumph of
the contradiction. He waits until that shadowy proletariat which
haunts the system takes on itself flesh and blood and shakes the
system with which it has grown up. But this waiting for the
development of the inevitable is weary work to those who want to
realise forthwith, so they, unable to confound the logic of Engels,
attack the "abstractions" on which his theory is founded. They still
oppose their "eternal truths" to the dialectic.

Thus in England, where the strife between the two parties in the
socialist movement has lately been waged with a somewhat amusing
ferocity, Engels is charged with a wholesale borrowing from Hegel. In
any other country than England this would not be laid up against a
writer, but the Englishman is so averse to philosophy that the
association of one's name with that of a philosopher, and a German
philosopher in particular, is tantamount to an accusation of keeping
bad company. But a glance at the following pages should tend to
dispose of so romantic a statement which could, in fact, only have
been made by those who know neither Hegel nor Engels.

That Hegel furnished the original philosophic impetus to both Marx and
Engels is true beyond question, but the impetus once given, the course
of the founders of modern socialism tended ever further from the
opinions of the idealistic philosopher. In fact Engels says somewhat
self consciously, not to say boasts, that he and his followers were
pioneers in applying the dialectic to materialism. Whatever accusation
may be made against Engels, this much is certain that he was no
Hegelian. In fact both in the present work and in "Feuerbach" he is at
great pains to show the relation of the socialist philosophy as
conceived by himself and Marx to that of the great man for whom he
always kept a somewhat exaggerated respect, but from whom he differed
fundamentally. Engels' attack upon the philosophy of Duehring is based
upon dislike of its idealism, the fundamental thesis upon which the
work depends being entirely speculative. Duehring insisted that his
philosophy was a realist philosophy and Engels' serious arguments,
apart from the elaborate ridicule with which he covers his opponent
and which is by no means a recommendation to the book, is directed to
show that it is not realist, that it depends upon certain preconc