150,000 and
200,000 were sold in England and America.

SECTION 4. THE ECONOMIC AND EVOLUTIONARY INTERPRETATIONS.
(1859 TO THE PRESENT)

The year 1859 saw the launching of two new theories of the utmost
importance. These, together with the political developments of the next
twelve years, completely altered the view-point of the intellectual
class, as well as of the peoples. In relation to the subject under
discussion this meant a reversal of historical judgment as radical as
that which occurred at the time of the French Revolution. The three new
influences, in the order of their immediate importance for
historiography, were the following: 1. The publication of Marx's _Zur
Kritik der politischen Oekonomie_ in 1859, containing the germ of the
economic interpretation of history later developed in _Das Kapital_
(1867) and in other works. 2. The publication of Darwin's _Origin of
Species_, giving rise to an evolutionary treatment of history. 3. The
Bismarckian wars (1864-71), followed by German intellectual and material
hegemony, and the defeat of the old liberalism. This lasted only until
the Great War (1914-18), when Germany was cast down and liberalism rose
in more radical guise than ever.

[Sidenote: Marx]

Karl Marx not only viewed history for the first time from the point of
view of the proletariat, or working class, but he directly asserted that
in the march of mankind the economic factors had always been, in the last
analysis, decisive; that the material basis of life, {725} particularly
the system of production, determined, in general, the social, political
and religious ideas of every epoch and of every locality. Revolutions
follow as the necessary consequence of economic change. In the scramble
for sustenance and wealth class war is postulated as natural and
ceaseless. The old Hegelian antithesis of idea versus personality took
the new form of "the masses" versus "the great man," both of whom were
but puppets in the hands of overmastering determinism. As often
interpreted, Marx's theory replaced the Hegelian "spirits of the time" by
the classes, conceived as entities struggling for mastery.

This brilliant theory suffered at first in its application, which was
often hasty, or fantastic. As the economic factor had once been
completely ignored, so now it was overworked. Its major premise of an
"economic man," all greed and calculation, is obviously false, or rather,
only half true. Me