ABSTRACT
Dialectic Materialism rests its hope in the very sticks and stones, instead of in a spirit that is supposed to reside behind them. Otherwise it is not different from any other animistic philosophy. Marx drove out of the study of history the same feeling that he drove out of Hegel's philosophy. That is the only connection between dialectic materialism and the economic interpretation of history. It was a matter-of-fact interpretation of history, and it is a matter-of-fact philosophy so far as one can be matter-of-fact, and still retain that animistic attitude which is the essence of philosophy. That rejection of illusions religious, moralistic, legal, political, æsthetic is the immortal essence of Marx's contribution to the science of history, and to history itself. Marx himself declared that philosophy, like law and politics and religion, and art, is subject to an economic interpretation at the hands of science.
