means. In other words it simply means that we do not look at the world as something dead and unchangeable, but as something which is continually changing; as the great Greek philosopher who first saw this great truth expressed it: nothing is, everything becomes; or, to be more exact, existence is a constant process of change or growth. If we want to understand things we must understand their appearance and disappearance, their growth and decline.
This way of contemplating things in their movement, of studying their birth, growth and decline, when applied to the study of the history of human society by a materialist, that is to say by one who knows that only material facts exist and develop independently, and ideas only reflect the existence and development of the material world,—is the Materialistic Conception of History, the foundation of the Marxian Scientific System. In other words, the Materialistic conception of history maintains that the evolution of human society as a whole, and that of all human institutions, is not, as the idealists insisted, the result of the changes in men's ideas relative to the society they were living in and its institutions, which changes are brought about by the inherent law of development of the ideas; but that, quite to the contrary, the development of society, including men's ideas of human society and institutions, are the result of the development of the material conditions under which men live; that these conditions are the only ones which have an independent existence and development; that the changes of the material conditions cause the institutions of human society to be changed to suit them; and that the ideas on all subjects relating to man in society, including those of right and wrong between man and man and even between man and his God, are changed by man in accordance with and because of, those changed material conditions of his existence.
As was stated before, both the component elements of this philosophy, the materialistic "view" and the dialectic "method," were found by Marx ready to do service, and his
