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AVROV'S socialism is essentially based upon Kant's idea of humanity—humanity and human dignity. Mankind, life, sacrifice, are Lavrov's humanistic battle cries; justice and truth are his two great demands. Theoretically the aspiration towards truth, practically the struggle for justice, these are the duties of the developed individuality. Justice is recognised to consist in equal respect for the rights of one's own and for those of another's individuality.

Lavrov was on terms of personal friendship with Marx and the earlier Marxists, but never accepted historical materialism. To use his own words, he was not a historical materialist, but a historical realist. Being the latter he rejected materialism as a whole, regarding it as too dogmatic, as unduly metaphysical; nor could he accept the extreme objectivism of the materialists, the historical materialism of Marx. Lavrov was a subjectivist. Nevertheless he endeavoured to be just to metaphysical and historical materialism, which impressed him by its consistency and its radicalism. In the works he wrote after the Historical Letters, economic conditions were recognised as extremely important factors, political manifestations, for example, being deduced therefrom. From time to time he represented the present as predominantly economic, but he never really abandoned a rationalist foundation.

Nor must we fail to note what Lavrov said about the class struggle, which did not to him scem of essential significance as it did to Marx.

We must note, too, his outlook on the international, which he regarded as the realisation of philosophic cosmopolitanis waxing enthusiastic on behalf of the latter at the very time when Marx was endeavouring to exclude cosmopolitanism from the international.

Lavrov was further distinguished from Marx by his conception of society and of history, for Lavrov made the individual his starting point, held fast to the individual consciousness, and considered that qualitative differences between individuals must be invoked to explain the historical process. Concessions to Marx and Comte were doubtless made, but the individualism of the "critically-thinking individuality" was nevertheless retained.

In agreement with Comte, Lavrov conceived historical