Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/20

 is weary work to those who want to realise forthwith, so they, unable to confound the logic of Engels, attack the "abstractions" on which his theory is founded. They still oppose their "eternal truths" to the dialectic.

Thus in England, where the strife between the two parties in the socialist movement has lately been waged with a somewhat amusing ferocity, Engels is charged with a wholesale borrowing from Hegel. In any other country than England this would not be laid up against a writer, but the Englishman is so averse to philosophy that the association of one's name with that of a philosopher, and a German philosopher in particular, is tantamount to an accusation of keeping bad company. But a glance at the following pages should tend to dispose of so romantic a statement which could, in fact, only have been made by those who know neither Hegel nor Engels.

That Hegel furnished the original philosophic impetus to both Marx and Engels is true beyond question, but the impetus once given, the course of the founders of modern socialism tended ever further from the opinions of the idealistic philosopher. In fact Engels says somewhat self consciously, not to say boasts, that he and his followers were pioneers in applying the dialectic to materialism. Whatever accusation may be made against Engels, this much is certain that he was no Hegelian. In fact both in the present work and in "Feuerbach" he is at great pains to show the relation of the socialist philosophy as conceived by himself and Marx to that of the great man for whom he always kept a somewhat exaggerated respect, but from whom he differed fundamentally. Engels attack upon the philosophy of Duehring is based upon dislike of its idealism, the