ABSTRACT
The former passed their lives in an intellectual environment in which the sense for history was deeply rooted; and their conversion to naturalism had a unique character which marks them out from others and renders the process interesting to the historian. This chapter examines a few of the instances of gradual transformation which have most significance for the development of German thought. The two great personalities of German socialism, Carl Marx and C. Engels, effected the same transition from idealism to naturalism, but in a more drastic and thorough manner. A law of nature is a “seeing in order to foresee,” a continual anticipation of fact, for even becoming is present to it as a fact; and under the influence of the prevalent naturalism Marx began to model his dialectic unconsciously on the plan of the natural law. Hermann never overcame the contradiction arising out of the two conflicting claims of naturalism and idealism.
