n's motives are mixed, and so are those of aggregates
of men. There are other elements in progress besides the economic ones.
The only effective criticism of the theory of economic determination is
that well expressed by Dr. Shailer Mathews, that it is too simple.
Self-interest is one factor in history, but not the only one.

[Sidenote: Bax]

Exception can be more justly taken to the way in which the theory has
sometimes been applied than to its formulation. Belfort Bax, maintaining
that the revolt from Rome was largely economic in its causes, gave as one
of these "the hatred of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, obviously due to
its increasing exactions." Luther would have produced no result had not
the economic soil been ready for his seed, and with that soil prepared he
achieved a world-historical result even though, in Bax's opinion, his
character and intellect were below those of the average English village
grocer-deacon who sold sand for sugar. Luther, {726} in fact, did no
more than give a flag to those discontented with the existing political
and industrial life. Strange to say, Bax found even the most radical
party, that of the communistic Anabaptists, retrograde, with its program
of return to a golden age of gild and common land.

A somewhat better grounded, but still inadequate, solution of the problem
was offered by Karl Kautsky. [Sidenote: Kautsky] He, too, found the
chief cause of the revolt in the spoliation of Germany by Rome. In
addition to this was the new rivalry of commercial classes. Unlike Bax,
Kautsky finds in the Anabaptists Socialists of whom he can thoroughly
approve.

The criticism that must be made of these and similar attempts, is that
the causes picked out by them are too trivial. To say that the men who,
by the thousands and tens of thousands suffered martyrdom for their
faith, changed that faith simply because they objected to pay a tithe,
reminds one of the ancient Catholic derivation of the whole movement from
Luther's desire to marry. The effect is out of proportion to the cause.
But some theorists were even more fantastic than trivial. When Professor
S. N. Patten traces the origins of revolutions to either over-nutrition
or under-nutrition, and that of the Reformation to "the growth of
frugalistic concepts"; when Mr. Brooks Adams asserts that it was all due
to the desire of the people for a cheaper religion, exchanging an
expensive offering for justification by faith and men