SCIENCE AND THE WORKING CLASS 



words as Marx, Engels summed up his con- 

 clusions relative to religion by declaring that 

 " man lost in religion his own nature, divested 

 himself of his manhood. Now that religion has 

 lost its hold on the human mind through his- 

 torical development, man becomes aware of the 

 void in him and of his lack of support. There is 

 no other salvation for him, if he wishes to regain 

 his manhood, than to thoroughly overcome all 

 religious ideas and return sincerely, not to ' God,' 

 but to himself." 



Engels, although not on such intimately per- 

 sonal terms with the historically significant 

 Young-Hegelians as Marx, had likewise taken 

 his departure from Hegel's dialectic. He had 

 then studied Bauer's conception of self -conscious- 

 ness and Feuerbach's humanitarianism, and 

 pushed on beyond them in search of a fuller 

 understanding of the Grecian natural philoso- 

 phers. He became aware of the great historical 

 value of the ancient natural philosophy. Realiz- 

 ing that it contained much fantastic by-work, he 

 nevertheless understood that it was the forerunner 

 of a scientific theory of evolution. On the other 

 hand, he did not fall into the mistake of those 

 purely empirical scientists, who snubbed Hegel 

 for his idealism and pretended to have explained 



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