find his way out of the abstraction, which
he hated with a deadly hatred, to living reality. He clutches hard at
Nature and Humanity, but "Nature" and "Humanity" remain empty words with
him. He does not know how to tell us anything positive about real nature
and real men. We can only reach living men from the abstract men of
Feuerbach if we regard them as active historical agents. Feuerbach
strove against that, hence the year 1848, which, he did not understand,
signified for him merely the final break with the real world, retirement
into solitude. German conditions must for the most part bear the guilt
of allowing him to starve miserably.

But the step which Feuerbach did not make had not yet been made. The
cultus of man in the abstract which was the kernel of Feuerbach's
religion must be replaced by the knowledge of real men and their
historical development. This advance of Feuerbach's view beyond
Feuerbach himself was published in 1845 by Marx in the "Holy Family."

IV.

Strauss, Bauer, Stirner, Feuerbach, these were the minor representatives
of the Hegelian philosophy, so far as they did not abandon the field of
philosophy. Strauss has, in addition to the "Life of Jesus" and
"Dogmatics," only produced philosophical and ecclesiastical historical
work of a literary character, after the fashion of Renan; Bauer has
merely done something in the department of primitive Christianity, but
that significant; Stirner remained a "freak" even after Bakunine had
mixed him with Proudhon and designated his amalgamation "Anarchism."
Feuerbach alone possessed any significance as a philosopher; but not
only did philosophy remain for him the vaunted superior of all other
sciences, the quintessence of all science, an impassable limitation, the
untouchable holy thing, he stood as a composite philosopher; the under
half of him was materialist, the upper half idealist. He was not an apt
critic of Hegel but simply put him aside as of no account, while he
himself, in comparison with the encyclopedic wealth of the Hegelian
system, contributed nothing of any positive value, except a bombastic
religion of love and a thin, impotent system of ethics.

But from the breaking up of the Hegelian school there proceeded another,
the only one which has borne real fruit, and this tendency is coupled
with the name of Marx.[2]

In this case the separation from the Hegelian philosophy occurred by
means of a return to the materialistic standpoin