In particular, philosophic materialism does not prove that economic
causes are fundamental in politics. The view of Buckle, for example,
according to which climate is one of the decisive factors, is equally
compatible with materialism. So is the Freudian view, which traces
everything to sex. There are innumerable ways of viewing history which
are materialistic in the philosophic sense without being economic or
falling within the Marxian formula. Thus the "materialistic conception
of history" may be false even if materialism in the philosophic sense
should be true.

On the other hand, economic causes might be at the bottom of all
political events even if philosophic materialism were false. Economic
causes operate through men's desire for possessions, and would be
supreme if this desire were supreme, even if desire could not, from a
philosophic point of view, be explained in materialistic terms.

There is, therefore, no logical connection either way between
philosophic materialism and what is called the "materialistic
conception of history."

It is of some moment to realize such facts as this, because otherwise
political theories are both supported and opposed for quite
irrelevant reasons, and arguments of theoretical philosophy are
employed to determine questions which depend upon concrete facts of
human nature. This mixture damages both philosophy and politics, and
is therefore important to avoid.

For another reason, also, the attempt to base a political theory upon
a philosophical doctrine is undesirable. The philosophical doctrine of
materialism, if true at all, is true everywhere and always; we cannot
expect exceptions to it, say, in Buddhism or in the Hussite movement.
And so it comes about that people whose politics are supposed to be a
consequence of their metaphysics grow absolute and sweeping, unable to
admit that a general theory of history is likely, at best, to be only
true on the whole and in the main. The dogmatic character of Marxian
Communism finds support in the supposed philosophic basis of the
doctrine; it has the fixed certainty of Catholic theology, not the
changing fluidity and sceptical practicality of modern science.

Treated as a practical approximation, not as an exact metaphysical
law, the materialistic conception of history has a very large measure
of truth. Take, as an instance of its truth, the influence of
industrialism upon ideas. It is industrialism, rather than the
arguments o