t, that is to say, a
determination to comprehend the actual world--nature and history--as it
presents itself to each one of us, without any preconceived idealistic
balderdash interfering; it was resolved to pitilessly sacrifice any
idealistic preconceived notion which could not be brought into harmony
with facts actually discovered in their mutual relations, and without
any visionary notions. And materialism in general claims no more. Only
here, for the first time in the history of the materialistic philosophy,
was an earnest endeavor made to carry its results to all questions
arising in the realm of knowledge, at least in its characteristic
features.

Hegel was not merely put on one side, the school attached itself on the
contrary to his openly revolutionary side, the dialectic method. But
this method was of no service in its Hegelian form. According to Hegel
the dialectic is the self-development of the Idea. The Absolute Idea
does not only exist from eternity, but it is also the actual living soul
of the whole existing world. It develops from itself to itself through
all the preliminary stages which are treated of at large in "Logic," and
which are all included in it. Then it steps outside of itself, changing
with nature itself, where it, without self-consciousness, is disguised
as a necessity of nature, goes through a new development, and, finally,
in man himself, becomes self-consciousness. This self-consciousness now
works itself out into the higher stages from the lower forms of matter,
until finally the Absolute Idea is again realized in the Hegelian
philosophy. According to Hegel, the dialectic development apparent in
nature and history, that is a causative, connected progression from the
lower to the higher, in spite of all zig-zag movements and momentary
setbacks, is only the stereotype of the self-progression of the Idea
from eternity, whither one does not know, but independent at all events
of the thought of any human brain. This topsy-turvy ideology had to be
put aside. We conceived of ideas as materialistic, as pictures of real
things, instead of real things as pictures of this or that stage of the
Absolute Idea. Thereupon, the dialectic became reduced to knowledge of
the universal laws of motion--as well of the outer world as of the
thought of man--two sets of laws which are identical as far as matter is
concerned but which differ as regards expression, in so far as the mind
of man can employ them conscio