CHAPTER V.
The Ethics of Marxism.
1.—The Roots of the Materialist Conception of History.
The rapid progress of the natural sciences since the French Revolution is intimately connected with the expansion of capitalism from that time on. The great capitalist industry depended more and more on the application of science, and, consequently, had every reason to supply it with men and means. Modern technique gives to science not only new objects of activity, but also new tools and new methods. Finally international communication brought a mass of new material. Thus was acquired strength and means to carry the idea of evolution successfully through.
But even more than for natural science was the French Revolution an epoch of importance for the science of society, the so-called mental sciences. Because in natural science the idea of evolution had already given a great stimulus to many thinkers. In mental science, on the other hand, it was only to be found in the most rudimentary attempts. Only after the French Revolution could it develop in them.
The mental sciences—Philosophy, Law, History, Political Economy—had been for the rising bourgeoisie before the French Revolution, in the first place, a means of fighting the ruling powers, social and political, which opposed them, and had their roots in the past. To discredit the past, and to paint the new and coming, in contrast to it, as the only good and useful, formed the principal occupation of these sciences.
That has altered since the Revolution. This gave the bourgeoisie the essence of what they wanted. It revealed to them, however, social forces which wanted to go further than themselves. These new forces began to be more dangerous than the relics of the deposed
