cluded. And everything about everything. For our author has suddenly grown very democratic, and insists that everybody makes history. Nothing is so mean, nor is any station in life so lowly, as not to influence the course of history. In order that there be no mistake about it, he gives the following express instructions: "He (the historian) must know all the persons (of the period he describes), their family relations, their actual course of action, as well as the opinions they held of each other. . . . All to the smallest detail."
Then he must know everything about everything else in creation: All sorts of relations between all sorts of groups in society, covering all the social relations of the people, the economic structure of society, the politics, ideas, sciences, etc., etc., and everything to the minutest detail. The Marxists also demand knowledge of all these social matters but Weisengruen does not mean it that way at all. No. He is a thoroughgoing scientist, as we have already seen, and therefore the historian's knowledge of social matters which he demands must be on a par with his knowledge of individuals and their relations as already hinted at. For instance, the historian must not only be acquainted with the tools, manner and processes of production in use, and the things produced during the period of which he treats, but he must have an actual inventory of all the "goods, wares and merchandise," as well as of all the household furniture, clothing and other worldly goods, possessed by each and every person who lived during that period, with all of whom, as we already know, the historian must be personally acquainted.
If this is not materialism run mad, what is it?
Of course, Weisengruen knows the absurdity of all this. And this would never have been said if it were not for the terrible plight in which he found himself in attempting to disprove the claim of the Materialistic Conception of History to the sole and exclusive possession of the attribute
