SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



of the scientific accumulation of facts which every 

 one can verify without the help of any authority, 

 and to raise the cry of sacrilege at every attempt 

 to criticise without bias and without malevolent 

 intent the tenets of the believers in mystic creeds. 



But the time has come when this method is 

 resented as an insult to intelligence and man- 

 hood. Orthodoxy must submit to the same criti- 

 cisms which all other things in the universe must 

 sustain. More still, it must henceforth bring 

 better proofs than bare assertions, if it would 

 survive. The cry that we are " attacking re- 

 ligion " when we are simply investigating its 

 claims, will no longer avail. And it is time to 

 hurl the accusation back at those who hide behind 

 it and who have always been the first to attack 

 the most objective and mild criticism with a flood 

 of abuse and misrepresentation. 



Unless the metaphysical idealists bring better 

 proofs than heretofore in justification of their 

 insistent claims that the proletariat must " go 

 back to Kant " for more knowledge, we shall 

 decline the invitation and ask : " What is there 

 in Kant to go back for ? " Dietzgen went back 

 to Kant, but only to show the absurdity of the 

 mystic conception of the " thing itself " and to 

 excel Hegel in this respect by stating the ques- 



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