of our modern materialist philosophy, but in conformity to their views.
When we remember that so-called indirect influences of economic conditions have absolutely nothing whatever to do either with our economic or material interests, nor even with our economic conditions, in the sense in which Kautsky uses the word,—Kautsky's views reduce themselves to the following: Not only are individuals prompted in their actions by ideal motives, but moral (that hated word "moral"), juridical, and other ideal influences which are not in any way connected with the economic conditions of our own society, play an important role in it.
And in order to prove to Bernstein that it is pretty hard to "improve" on Marx and Engels, and incidentally to guard against confusionists who do not know the difference between a theory of history and a code of practical ethics, he uses the following example: "Suppose that a naturalist had in one of his earlier works declared that the light and heat of the sun were the ultimate moving powers of all organic life on earth. In his later years he received an inquiry as to whether it were true that, according to his theory, the growth of a tree depended solely on the quantity of light and heat that it received directly from the sun. To this he naturally answered, that it was nonsense; that his theory must not be interpreted that way, that he knew very well that the quality of the seed, the soil, the condition of moisture and dryness, the direction and strength of the winds, etc., have likewise an influence on the growth of trees. And then comes a commentator, confuses the direct influence of the sun on vegation with his being the ultimate sole power-source on the earth, and declares, then, that the theory of the naturalist must not be taken in its first, one-sided, form, but in its last, qualified and therefore much more scientific form. He overlooks entirely the circumstance that in this form the theory ceases to be of scientific importance; it becomes a commonplace, familiar to every farmer during thousands of years."
Kautsky claims, and he is certainly right in doing so, that when a great thinker announces a new theory he need not go into lengthy explanations that it is not what other people may think it is by absurdly perverting it, but he may leave that to the common sense of those that follow him. And yet, had Kautsky had a chance to read the Socialist literature on this side of the ocean he would not have scoffed so cruelly at Bernstein's painstaking state
