his splendid devotion to the cause of the workers through
years of terrible poverty and hardship when he might have chosen wealth
and fame. It is known, for example, that Bismarck made the most
extravagant offers to enlist the services of Marx, who declined them at
the very time when he was suffering awful privations. Marx himself has
noted more than one instance of individual idealism triumphing over
material interests and class environment, and, by a perversity that is
astonishing, and not wholly disingenuous, some of his critics, notably
Ludwig Slonimski,[81] have used these instances as arguments against his
theory, claiming that they disprove it! We are to understand the
materialistic theory, then, as teaching, not that history is determined
by economic forces only, but that in human evolution the chief factors
are social factors, and that these factors in turn are _mainly_ molded
by economic circumstances.[82]

This, then, is the basis of the Socialist philosophy, which Engels
regarded as "destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done
for biology." Marx himself made a similar comparison.[83] Marx was, so
Liebknecht tells us, one of the first to recognize the importance of
Darwin's investigations to sociology. His first important treatment of
the materialistic theory, in "A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy," appeared in 1859, the year in which "The Origin of
Species" appeared. "We spoke for months of nothing else but Darwin, and
the revolutionizing power of his scientific conquests,"[84] says
Liebknecht. Darwin, however, had little knowledge of political economy,
as he acknowledged in a letter to Marx, thanking the latter for a copy
of "Das Kapital." "I heartily wish that I possessed a greater knowledge
of the deep and important subject of economic questions, which would
make me a more worthy recipient of your gift," he wrote.[85]

IV

The test of such a theory must lie in its application. Let us, then,
apply the materialistic principle, first to a specific event, and then
to the great sweep of the historic drama. Perhaps no single event has
more profoundly impressed the imaginations of men, or filled a more
important place in our histories, than the discovery of America by
Columbus. In the schoolbooks, this great event figures as a splendid
adventure, arising out of a romantic dream. But the facts are, as we
know, far otherwise.[86] In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there
we