Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/601

 THE PRESENT STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN GERMANY 587

Providence or material conditions be anthropomorphized as the factors exclusively operating in history. A philosophy of history which is either materialistic or idealistic will be judged by a critique of knowledge in precisely the same way as the corre- sponding systems of natural philosophy. The very dilemma materialism or idealism savors of metaphysics; that is, the metaphysical character of present-day historiography is not the fault of the "historical laws," but it comes from the principles from which they are derived, from the monism in which it is attempted to make them converge.

This judgment applies also to the latest attempt of Rudolf Staummler to found a philosophy of history upon the basis of idealism. 1

Staummler's book, the size of which is out of all propor- tion to its contents, starts from the standpoint of historical materialism. This philosophy, says Staummler, makes the right- ful attempt to comprehend social life monistically. " its principle takes this direction : that the whole of the social life of men is a unity to be scientifically understood according to mechanical laws" (p. 72). To which we reply that if the proposed aim is worth choosing the way selected by materialism does not lead to it.

The fundamental principle of historical materialism that economics is the basis upon which law erects itself as super- structure is false. Economics and law are inseparably con- nected with each other, like substance and form. "Social life is externally regulated association of human beings" (p. 90). This external regulation law is the form of social life, the substance of which is "human cooperation direction toward the satisfaction of desire" (p. 137). Karl Marx's picture of the foundation and the superstructure is consequently faulty. We can speak of economy in the social sense only when it is carried on under a certain legal order. Nowhere does the one stand above the other, nor is the one produced by the other. That a

1 Wirtschaft ttnd Kecht, nach dtr tnatfritjlistncfien Gesc/iic/itsauffassung. Eine tozialphilosophische Untersuchuni;, Leipzig, 1896.