CHAPTER III THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM AND PHILOSOPHY. MATERIALISM. KANT. FICHTE. HEGEL. FEUERBACH. DIALECTIC MATERIALISM. THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE PROLETARIAT. This study of the lives of Marx and Engels is in accordance with the scientific method they themselves developed and employed. Despite their genius, Marx and Engels were after all men of a definite historic moment. As both of them matured, that is, as both of them gradually emerged from their immediate home influence they were directly drawn into the vortex of the historic epoch which was characterised chiefly by the effects upon Germany of the July Revolution, by the forward strides of science and philosophy, by the growth of the labour and the revolutionary movements. Marx and Engels were not only the products of a definite historic period, but in their very origin they were men of a specific locality, the Rhine province, which of all parts of Germany was the most international, the most industrialised, and the most widely exposed to the influence of the French Revolution. During the first years
CHAPTER III THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM AND PHILOSOPHY. MATERIALISM. KANT. FICHTE. HEGEL. FEUERBACH. DIALECTIC MATERIALISM. THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE PROLETARIAT. This study of the lives of Marx and Engels is in accordance with the scientific method they themselves developed and employed. Despite their genius, Marx and Engels were after all men of a definite historic moment. As both of them matured, that is, as both of them gradually emerged from their immediate home influence they were directly drawn into the vortex of the historic epoch which was characterised chiefly by the effects upon Germany of the July Revolution, by the forward strides of science and philosophy, by the growth of the labour and the revolutionary movements. Marx and Engels were not only the products of a definite historic period, but in their very origin they were men of a specific locality, the Rhine province, which of all parts of Germany was the most international, the most industrialised, and the most widely exposed to the influence of the French Revolution. During the first years