of civilized society; worse than the overwhelming deluge of Huns and Tartars."
Socialism, in so far as it is only political or economic, does not come within the purview of a
history of philosophy. But in the hands of Karl Marx Socialism acquired a philosophy. His
philosophy will be considered in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XXVII Karl MarxMARX is usually thought of as the man who claimed to have made Socialism scientific, and who
did more than any one else to create the powerful movement which, by attraction and repulsion,
has dominated the recent history of Europe. It does not come within the scope of the present work
to consider his economics, or his politics except in certain general aspects; it is only as a
philosopher, and an influence on the philosophy of others, that I propose to deal with him. In this
respect he is difficult to classify. In one aspect, he is an outcome, like Hodgskin, of the
Philosophical Radicals, continuing their rationalism and their opposition to the romantics. In
another aspect he is a revivifier of materialism, giving it a new interpretation and a new
connection with human history. In yet another aspect he is the last of the great system-builders, the
successor of Hegel, a believer, like him, in a rational formula summing up the evolution of
mankind. Emphasis upon any one of these aspects at the expense of the others gives a false and
distorted view of his philosophy.
The events of his life in part account for this complexity. He was born in 1818, at Trà ̈ves, like
Saint Ambrose. Trà ̈ves had been profoundly influenced by the French during the revolutionary
and Napoleonic era, and was much more cosmopolitan in outlook than most parts of Germany.
His ancestors had been rabbis, but his parents became Christian when he was a child. He married
a gentile aristocrat,