is the driving force. But it is matter in the peculiar sense that we have been considering, not the
wholly dehumanized matter of the atomists. This means that, for Marx, the driving force is really
man's relation to matter, of which the most important part is his mode of production. In this way
Marx's materialism, in practice, becomes economics.
The politics, religion, philosophy, and art of any epoch in human history are, according to Marx,
an outcome of its methods of production, and, to a lesser extent, of distribution. I think he would
not maintain that this applies to all the niceties of culture, but only to its broad outlines. The
doctrine is called the "materialist conception of history." This is a very important thesis; in
particular, it concerns the historian of philosophy. I do not myself accept the thesis as it stands, but
I think that it contains very important elements of truth, and I am aware that it has influenced my
own views of philosophical development as set forth in the present work. Let us, to begin with,
consider the history of philosophy in relation to Marx's doctrine.
Subjectively, every philosopher appears to himself to be engaged in the pursuit of something
which may be called "truth." Philosophers may differ as to the definition of "truth," but at any rate
it is something objective, something which, in some sense, everybody ought to accept. No man
would engage in the pursuit of philosophy if he thought that all philosophy is merely an
expression of irrational bias. But every philosopher will agree that many other philosophers have
been actuated by bias, and have had extra-rational reasons, of which they were usually
unconscious, for many of their opinions. Marx, like the rest, believes in the truth of his own
doctrines; he does not regard them as nothing but an expression of the feelings natural to a
rebellious middle-class German Jew in the middle of the nineteenth century. What can be said
about this conflict between the subjective and objective views of a philosophy?
We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to Aristotle expresses the mentality
appropriate to the City State; that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that
scholastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church as an organization; that
philosophy since Descartes, or at any rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the
commercial middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are philosophies appropriate to the
modern in-