s only a freewill agent within certain sharp and
relatively narrow bounds. In a given contingency, I may be "free" to act
in a certain manner, or to refrain from so acting. I may take my choice,
in the one direction or the other, entirely free, to all appearances,
from restraining or compelling influences. Thus, I have acted upon my
"will." But what factors formed my will? What circumstances determined
my decision? Perhaps fear, or shame, or pride; perhaps tendencies
inherited from my ancestors.

Engels admits that the economic factor in evolution has sometimes been
unduly emphasized. He says: "Marx and I are partly responsible for the
fact that the younger men have sometimes laid more stress on the
economic side than it deserves. In meeting the attacks of our opponents,
it was necessary for us to emphasize the dominant principle denied by
them; and we did not always have the time, place, or opportunity to let
the other factors which were concerned in the mutual action and reaction
get their deserts."[79] In another letter,[80] he says: "According to
the materialistic view of history, the factor which is in _last
instance_ decisive in history is the production and reproduction of
actual life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. But
when any one distorts this so as to read that the economic factor is the
sole element, he converts the statement into a meaningless, abstract,
absurd phrase. The economic condition is the basis; but the various
elements of the superstructure,--the political forms of the class
contests, and their results, the constitutions,--the legal forms, and
also all the reflexes of these actual contests in the brains of the
participants, the political, legal, philosophical theories, the
_religious views_ ... all these exert an influence on the development of
the historical struggles, and, in many instances, determine their form."

It is evident, therefore, that the doctrine does not imply economic
fatalism. It does not deny that ideals may influence historical
developments and individual conduct. While, as we shall see in a later
chapter, it is part of the doctrine that classes are formed upon a basis
of unity of material interests, it does not deny that men may, and often
do, act in accordance with the promptings of noble impulses and
humanitarian ideals, when their material interests would lead them to do
otherwise. We have a conspicuous example of this in the life of Marx
himself; in