here, having given a general idea of it in the 

 preceding pages. 



The two other Marxian theories have more 

 relation to our observations on scientific 

 socialism because they really give us the sure 

 and infallible key of social life. 



I allude to the idea expressed by Marx from 

 1859 in his Criticism on Political Economy, that 

 the economic phenomenon is the basis and 

 condition of all other human or social mani- 

 festations, and that consequently morals, law, 

 politics, are only phenomena derived from the 

 economic factor according to the conditions 

 of every people in every phase of history and 

 in all climates. 



This idea, which corresponds with the great 

 biological law that rules that the function is 

 determined by the organ, and which gives out 

 that each individual is the resultant of the 

 conditions innate and acquired of its physio- 

 logical organism living in a given environ- 

 ment so that one can give a biological import 

 to the famous dictum : " Tell me what you 

 eat and I will tell you* what you are," this 

 idea of a genius which displays before our 

 eyes the grand drama of history, no longer as 

 the arbitrary succession of great men on the 

 boards of the social theatre, but rather as 

 the resultant of the economic conditions of 

 each people, this grand idea, after a partial 

 application by Thorold Rogers,* has been so 

 brilliantly illustrated by Achille Loriaf that 

 I think it useless to add anything to it. 



* Th. Rogers, The Economic Interpretation of History. 

 t Loria, The Economic Basis of Society, London, 1894. 



