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his gendarmes of the future on religion and thereby gives it a longer lease of life by martyrdom. Wherever we look we find that Duehring's socialism has the Prussian brand.
After Herr Duehring has blithely got rid of religion he says "Man can now, since he is dependent upon himself and nature alone, intelligently direct the social forces in every way which open to him the course of things and his own existence." Let us look for a little while at that course of things to which the self-reliant human can give direction.
The first in the course of things by which man becomes self-reliant is being born. Then during the time of his immaturity his education is in the hands of his mother. "This period may, as in the old Roman law, reach to the age of puberty, that is to about fourteen years of age." Only where the older boys do not respect the authority of the mother does the father's assistance play a part and the public method of education robs this of all harm. With puberty the boy comes under the natural care of his father, where this is exercised in a truly fatherly manner, in other cases society takes charge of his education.
As Herr Duehring has already maintained the position that it is possible to convert the capitalistic methods of production into social methods without disturbing the mode of production itself, so he here seems to think that one can separate the modern bourgeois family from its entire economic foundations without any change in the whole form of the family. This form is so permanent in his estimation that he thinks of the old Roman jurisprudence, in an "improved" form, as the model of the family for ever, and he does not conceive of the family otherwise than as a permanent unit. The Utopists have the superiority over Herr Duehring here. In their estimation a really free mutual condition would arise in all the family relations as a result of the free association and the public ownership of the instruments of production together with the institution of a system of public education. And Marx has shown furthermore in his "Capital" how "the greater industry, which takes widows, young persons and children of both sexes from the home, and employs them in organized social productive processes, lays the foundation for a higher form of the family and better conditions for people of both sexes."
LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
APPENDIX
The foregoing pages will have given the reader some idea of the infinite care which Engels expended in order to keep abreast of the chief scientific discoveries of his times. He was as painstaking as a genius. On the other hand, his modesty was almost absurd, for he never ventured to claim anything for himself, and such ability as was displayed in the laying of the economic political foundations of the socialist movement was invariably credited by him to the superior talent and comprehension of Marx.
There is no question that the work constitutes a most effective reply to the arguments of Duehring, with whom, poor fellow, we need no longer trouble ourselves. It constitutes, moreover, a very formidable answer to all those who seek for a justification of the socialist movement in those abstract conceptions which the average man finds it so hard to escape. In fact, so removed is the point of view of the writer of the foregoing pages from that of the man in the street that it is doubtful whether it is possible for more than a comparatively few students thoroughly to grasp the significance of the dialectic and to apply it in a satisfactory and effective fashion. Still, there is no question that this understanding of the socialist movement, as a movement, is absolutely required of all who can be considered as taking an intelligent and useful attitude with regard to social and political questions.