§ II. The Constant Process of Evolution

The second postulate of the materialistic conception of history is: Nothing is immutable, everything is subject to a constant, never-ending process of change. This is the Hegelian process of formation, applied on the basis of materialism. “Every form of being is matter, and motion is the mode of being of matter.” Accordingly there are no unchangeable concepts and principles in the domain of politics, economics, law, morality, and religion. In the realm of mathematics alone Marx and Engels are willing to admit immutable principles, although even here the “eternal truths” are said to be rather few and far between.

It is plain that such views are the outcome of the grossest materialism, that they are of account only in so far as they are connected with materialism, and that they will necessarily share its fate. Just as God is the Eternal and Immutable in whom there is no shadow of change, no past or future, but an eternal present, thus also it will remain true forever that He is the Creator, the supreme Lord and final Goal of all things. It will remain true forever that man is created to serve God and thereby to attain eternal salvation, that in the life to come there is an eternal retribution for good and bad. True forever will be every word spoken by the infallible Truth, by the mouth of the prophets, and lastly by His only Son: “ My words shall not pass.” In brief, every iota of revealed truth will remain true forever, just as the so-called materialistic conception of history is a pernicious error, pernicious most of all to those who endeavor to use it as a bulwark against Christianity and its doctrines and sacraments.

If the truths of the Christian revelation are immutable and eternal, the same must be said no less of the fundamental concepts and principles of the natural order. They are the natural revelation of the thoughts of the Eternal, who is the source and fountain-head of all truth. Moreover, they are in manifold and necessary connection with divine revelation. In the course of centuries the notions of circle and square have not changed; nor will they ever change, just as little as the general notions of the religious and moral order and the principles derived therefrom shall ever become different. Our ideas are not vacant forms, but the intellectual images of the essence of things which ever remains the same throughout the changes of the physical world. The nature and destination of the first man did not differ from ours, and will be found to be the same in the last human being treading the earth.

The negation of eternal and immutable concepts and principles makes knowledge and science impossible and involves hopeless contradictions. Science deals with what is necessary and immutable. It is not satisfied with registering exterior phenomena, it tries to penetrate to and to lay bare the hidden causes and governing laws and thence to draw its conclusions; it endeavors to ascend to general and necessary principles. But how can this be done if no general, necessary, and immutable notions exist? If there are no immutable concepts, there is also no intellectual communication between different generations. It is impossible to enter upon the mode of thought of times gone by or to foresee in aught the destinies of future ages. The identity of concepts is completely lacking. How can we know whether Plato or Aristotle have reasoned correctly, how can we at all fathom their meaning, if their concepts and opinions were quite different from ours? In fact, we are completely at a loss to know whether they had ideas and opinions at all, because what we understand by these terms is mayhap a product of modern economic conditions unknown to the ancients. The most gruesome scepticism is the only logical consequence of the “materialistic conception of history.”

And thus naturally enough socialists are not lacking in contradictions. They are explicit to a fault in detailing the development of society in the past and the future. But how can they be sure that there was development in the past and that there will be development in the future? For, the notion of development has perhaps never been realized or will soon cease to be realized. How do they make out that religion, that private property in the means of production, that marriage “in the present acceptation of the term” shall vanish, if we cannot know whether there will be men in the future, and if there will be, whether they will have the same concepts or not? How do they know that in every period new political, religious, and moral ideas are the result of the economic conditions? Whence this general law, equally applicable to all times?

Probably in order to escape these difficulties and contradictions Marx and Engels concede the existence of immutable and eternal truths in the mathematical sciences, i.e., in the sciences capable of mathematical treatment—mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, and chemistry, and perhaps also biology.¹ By this concession they quite unconsciously overturn their entire evolutionary theory. For the above-mentioned mathematical sciences presuppose a great number of concepts and principles which they have in common with all other sciences, and which are properly the subject of philosophy.

¹ Cf. Engels, Dührings Umwälzung, 2d ed., p. 74 sqq.

The notions of being, substance, essence, quality, quantity, motion, force, cause, effect, law, necessity, time, eternity, relation, equality, knowledge, cognition, will, evolution, and countless others are the common property of all the sciences, not excluding the mathematical. They are the subject-matter of philosophy, whose duty it is to elucidate them in every respect and to arrange them in systematic order. From these immutable concepts, independent of time or space, there arise immutable principles which form the basis of correct thought and which are taken over from philosophy by the mathematical sciences. Among them we find, e.g., the principle of contradiction that nothing can be and not be at the same time in the same respect; the principle that two things which are equal to a third are also equal to each other; the principle that every effect must have a cause, that the effect cannot be greater than its cause, that a constant and permanent effect must be owing to a constant and permanent cause; the principle that the whole is greater than its part, that everything acts according to its nature, and that in nature there are unchangeable laws which can be discovered by observation, etc. Whatever we know scientifically about the certitude of our cognition, about the trustworthiness of our senses and of our consciousness, about the existence of things outside of ourselves, about the certainty derived from the testimony of others, all this and much more must be presupposed by the exact sciences as irrefragable and immutable truth. To deny or doubt these principles is to render science impossible; to accept them is to establish a firm foundation, whence we may safely rise to the knowledge of the highest and final cause of all things, the Creator of heaven and earth. But thereby we shall have reached also the indestructible sanctuary of religion and morality.

There are, therefore, eternal concepts and truths; there are principles as unchangeable and eternal as the eternal Truth itself from which they are derived. It is consequently evident fraud or naive self-delusion, if socialists imagine they cannot be refuted by religious and philosophical arguments, because, forsooth, religious and philosophical notions have been changed in the course of ages according to the state of economic conditions. If this socialist assumption were correct, there would, of course, be an end of religion and philosophy, but there would also be an end of “scientific” socialism, in fact of every science.

More especially it is entirely wrong to say that no valid inferences as to social institutions can be derived from the nature of man. Man is indeed capable of development and increasing perfection, but he ever retains essentially the same nature and the same propensities. He will ever remain a being composed of body and soul inclined to enjoyment and violence, to self-seeking, ambition, and anger, and only by overcoming himself can he obtain and preserve the mastery of reason over the lower appetites. And, as we shall show hereafter, it is also a constant law that the propensities and talents of men, however similar in their general nature, are nevertheless variously manifested in different individuals and therefore necessarily entail inequalities in social life.