he sums up the teachings of the official professors, and they are almost too gentle to be applied to the dispiriting and disheartening doctrines which are taught to the English-speaking student of to-day under the name of economics or philosophy.

In the first part of his pamphlet, for it is little more in size, Engels gives a short and concise account of the work of Hegel and the later Hegelian School. He shows how the philosophy of Hegel has both a conservative and a radical side and how conservatives and radicals alike might, (as a matter of fact they did), each derive support from his teachings, according to the amount of stress laid respectively upon the great divisions of his work, the "System" and the "Dialectic."

The Extreme Left developed through the application of the dialectic, and applied the philosophic doctrine thus derived to the criticism of existing political and religious institutions. This resulted in the gradual throwing away of the abstract part of the Hegelian philosophy, and in the study of facts and phenomena to an ever-increasing degree.

Marx had, in his youth, allied himself with the "Young Hegelians," as this school was called, and this fact had no slight influence upon his subsequent career. His critics lay the blame for much of the obscurity of language from which "Capital" in particular suffers, at the door of this training. His painful elaboration of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, his insistence upon the dialectic, and his continual use of the Hegelian philosophical expressions are due to his earlier controversial experiences. Still, on the other hand, his patient investigation of actual facts, his insistence on the value of positive knowledge as compared with abstract theory, and his diligent and persistent use of blue-books and statistics, were in a great measure results of the same training.

Now and again, we find Engels in this work displaying remarkable controversial acumen, as in his discussion of the phrase, "All that is real is reasonable, and all that is reasonable is real" (Alles was wirklich ist, ist vernuenftig, und alles was vernuenftig ist, ist wirklich). From this expression, by the development of the Hegelian argument, he arrives at the conclusion involved in the statement that the value of a social or political phenomenon is its transitoriness, the necessity of its disappearance. Hence the abolition of dogmatic statement and mere subjective reasoning in the realm of philosophy, the destruction of the old school of which Kant was the chief exponent, and the creation of a new school the most advanced teachers of which were, as they still are, the materialistic socialists, of whom Engels and Marx are the chief.

The object of this historical sketch is to show the origin of Feuerbach's philosophy as well as of that of Marx and Engels. As the fight between the Young Hegelians and the conservatives grew hotter, the radicals were driven back upon the 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 to exercise any influence, and the Freethought societies, at one time so numerous, have now practically disappeared. In accordance with the theories as set forth by Engels they were bound to disappear; their teachings had no real bearing upon social progress, they contributed nothing of any scientific value to modern thought, and as Engels carefully shows, the reading of history by these lecturers was vitiated by a lack of scientific grasp, and inability to take a rational view of the great principles of historical development.

In the third part of this little book Engels deals with a very interesting question which still disturbs the minds of philosophers, and concerning which much discussion goes on even among the materialists; that is the question as to the effect of religion upon social progress. Feuerbach had made the statement that periods of social progress are marked by religious changes. He uses religion as a synonym for human love, forcing the meaning of the word religion from the Latin "religare," "to tie," in order to give it an etymological and derivative meaning in support of his statement, a controversial trick for which he is rebuked by Engels. The declaration that great historical revolutions are accompanied by religious changes is declared by Engels not to be true, except in a limited degree as regards the three great world-religions—Christianity, Mahommedanism and Buddhism.

Engels declared that the change in religion simultaneous with economic and political revolution stopped short with the bourgeois revolt which was made without any appeal to religion whatsoever. It is evident that this is not entirely true, for in the English-speaking countries, at all events, not only the bourgeois but frequently also the proletarian movements attempt to justify themselves from Scripture. The teachings of the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount are frequently called to the aid of the revolutionary party; Christian Socialists, in the English and American, not the continental sense of the term, as such are admitted to the International Congresses; and other evidences of the compatibility of religion with the proletarian movement can be traced.

But in the broader sense of his statement Engels is undoubtedly