p I am well aware thai in saying all Ihis 1 risk surprising very many of my readers. I am nol afraid to do so; the ancient thinker was right iu saying that astonishment is the mother of philosophy. For (he reader not to remain at the stage, so to say, of astonishment, I shall lirst of all recommend thai he ask himself what Feuerbach meant when, while giving a terse but vivid outline of his philosophical curriculum ritae. he wrote, "God was my lirst thought, Reason the second, and Man the third and last thought”. I contend thai this question is conclusively answered in the following meaningful words of Feuerbach himself, "In the controversy between materialism and spiritualism ... the human head is under discussion ... once we have learnt what kind of matter the brain is made up of, we shall soon arrive al a clear view upon all other matter as well,matter in general."  [123•***  Elsewhere be says that his “anthropology”, i.e., his “humanism”, merely means that man takes for Crod that which is his own essence, his own spirit .  [123•****  He goes on to say thai Descartes did nol eschew 124 tliis “anlliropological” point of view.  [124•*  How is all this lo be understood? It means that Fenerbach made “Man” the point of departure of his philosophical reasoning only because it was from thai point of departure that lie hoped the sooner to achieve his aim—to bring forth a correct view npou matter in general and its relation to the “spirit”. Consequently what we have here is a methodological derice, whose value was conditioned by circumstances of lime and place, i.e.. by I lie thinking habits of the learned, or simply educated, Germans of (be time,  [124•**  and not by any sped lid ly of irorkl-oullook.  [124•*** 

p The above ((notation from Fcuerbach regarding the "human head" shows that when lie wrote these words the problem of "the kind of matter the brain is made up of was solved by him in a “purely” materialistic sense. This solution was also accepted by Marx and Kngels. It provided the foundation of their own philosophy, as can be seen with the utmost clarity from Kngels’ works, so often quoted here—f.-udirig Fcuerbach and Anti-Diihring.  That is why we must make a closer study of this solution; in doing so, we shall at the same lime be studying the philosophical aspect of Marxism.

p In an article entitled “Vorläufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophic”, which came out in 1842 and, judging by tlie facts, bad a strong influence on Marx, Feuerbach said that "the real relation of thinking to being is only as follows: being is the subject; thinking, the predicate.  Thinking is conditioned by being, and not being by thinking. Being is conditioned by itself ... has its foundation in itself."  [125•* 

p Tins view on the relation of being lo thinking, which Marx and Engels made the foundation of the materialistic explanation of history, is a most important outcome of the criticism of Hegel’s idealism already completed in ils main features by Feuerbach, a criticism whose conclusions can be set forth in a few words.

p Feuerbach considered that Hegel’s philosophy had removed tlie contradiction between being and thinking, a contradiction that bad expressed itself in particular relief in Kant. However, as Feuerbach though), il removed that contradiction, while continuing to remain within the latter, i.e., within one of ils elements, namely, thinking.  With Hegel, thinking is being: "Thinking is the subject; being, the predicate."  [125•**  It follows that Hegel, and idealism in general, eliminated the contradiction only by removing one of its component, elements, i.e., being, matter, nature. However, removing one of the component elements in a contradiction does not at all mean doing away with I hat contradiction. "Hegel’s doctrine that reality is ’postulated’ by the Idea is merely a translation into rationalistic terms of the theological doctrine that Nature was created by God,—and reality, matter, by an abstract, non-material being."  [125•***  This does not apply only to Hegel’s absolute idealism. Kant’s transcendental idealism, according to which the external world receives ils laws from Reason instead of Reason receiving them from the external world, is closely akin to the theological concept that the world’s laws were dictated to it by divine Reason.  [125•****  Idealism does not establish the unity of being and thinking, nor can it do so; it tears that unity asunder. Idealistic philosophy’s point of departure—the "/" as the fundamental philosophical principle—is totally erroneous. It is not the "/" that must be the starling-point of genuine philosophy, but the "/" and the “you”.  It is such a point of departure that makes it possible lo arrive at a proper understanding of the relation between thinking and being, between the subject and the object. 1 am "/" to myself, and at the same time I am “you” to others. The "/" is the subject, and at the same time the object.  It must at the same time be noted that 1 am not the abstract being idealistic 126 philosopliy operates with. I am an actual being; my body belongs to my essence; moreover, my body, as a whole, is my /, my genuine essence. It is not an abstract being that thinks, but that actual being, that body. Thus, contrary to what the idealists assert, an actual and material being proves to be the subject, and thinking—the predicate. Herein lies the only possible solution of the contradiction between being and thinking, a contradiction that idealism sought so vainly to resolve. None of the elements in the contradiction is removed; both are preserved, revealing their real unity.  "That which 1o me, or subjectively, is a purely spiritual, non-material and non-sensuous act is in itself an objective, material and sensuous act."  [126•* 

p Note that in saying this, Feuerbach stands close to Spinoza, whose philosophy he was already setting forth with great sympathy at the time his own breakaway from idealism was taking shape, i.e., when he was writing hishistory of modern philosophy.  [126•**  In 1843 he made the subtle observation, in his Grundsatze, that pantheism is a theological materialism, a negation of theology but as yet on a theological standpoint. This confusion of materialism and tlieology constituted Spinoza’s inconsistency, which, however, did not prevent him from providing a "correct—at least for his time—philosophical expression for the materialist trend of modern times”. That was why Feuerbach called Spinoza "the Moses of the modem free-thinkers and materialists".  [126•***  In 1847 Feuerbach asked: "What then, under careful examination, is that which Spinoza calls Substance, in terms of logics or metaphysics, and God in terms of theology? To this question he replied categorically, "Nothing else but Nature”. He saw Spinozism’s main shortcoming in the fact that "in it the sensible, anti-theological essence of Nature assumes the aspec! of an abstract, metaphysical being”. Spinoza eliminated the dualism of God and Nature, since he declared that the acts of Nature were those of God. However, it was just because he regarded the acts of Nature to be those of God, that the latter remained, with Spinoza, a being distinct from Nature, but forming its foundation. He regarded God as the subject and Nature as the predicate. A philosophy that has completely liberal ed itself from theological traditions must remove this 127 important shortcoming in Spinoza’s philosophy, which in its essence is sound. "Away with this contradiction!" Feuerbach exclaimed. "Not Deus sive Natura but aut Deus out Natura is the watchword of Truth."  [127•* 

p Thus, Feuerbach’s “humanism” proved to be nothing else but Spinozism disencumbered of its theological pendant. And it was the standpoint of this kind of Spinozism. which Feuerbach had freed of its theological pendant, that Marx and Engels adopted when they broke with idealism.

p However, disencumbering Spinozism of its theological appendage meant revealing its true and materialist content. Consequently, the Spinozism of Marx and Engels was indeed materialism brought up to date.  [127•** 

p Further. Thinking is not the cause of being, but its effect, or rather its property.  Feuerbach says: Folge und Eigenschaft. I feel and think, not as a subject coritraposed to an object, but as a subject-object, as an actual and material being. "For us the object is not merely the thing sensed, but also the basis, the indispensable condition of my sensation.” The objective world is not only without me but also within me, inside my own skin.  [127•***  Man is only a part of Nature, a part of being; there is therefore no room for any contradiction between his thinking and his being. Space and time do not exist only as forms of thinking. They are also forms of being, forms of my contemplation. They are such, solely because I myself am a creature that lives in time and space, and because I sense and feel as such a creature. In general, the laws of being are at the same t ime laws of thinking.

p That is what Feuerbach said.  [127•****  And the same thing, though in a different wording, was said by Engels in his polemic with Diihring.  [127•*****  This already shows what an important part of 128 Feuerbach’s philosophy became an integral parl of the philosophy of Marx and Engels.

p If Marx began to elaborate his materialist explanation of history by criticising II egeVs philosophy of law, he could do so only because Feuerbach had completed his criticism of HegeVs speculative philosophy.

p Even when cn/immg^^1^^ Feuerbach in his Theses, Marx often develops and augments the former’s ideas. Here is an instance from the sphere of “epislemology”. Before thinking of an object, man, according to Feuerbach, experiences its action on himself, contemplates and senses it.

p It was Ibis thought that Marx had in mind when he wrote: "The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is thai tiling [(legensland], reality, scnsiiousness arc conceived only in the form of I he object [Objekt], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as sensuous human activity, practice, = not subjectively."^^74^^ This shortcoming in materialism, Marx goes on 1o say, accounts for the circumstance thai, in his Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach regards theoretical activity as the only genuine human activity. Expressed in oilier words, this means that, according to Feuerbach, our 7 cognises the object by coming under its action.  [128•*  Marx, however, objects by saying: our 7 cognises the object, while at the same time acting upon that object. Marx’s thought is a perfectly correct one: as Fausl already said, "Am Anfang war die Tat”. It may of coursebeobjecled, in defence of Feuerbach, that, in the process of our acting upon objects, we cognise their properties only in the measure in which they, for their parl, acl upon us. In both cases sensation precedes thinking; in both cases we first sense Iheir properties, and only then think of them. But that is something that Marx did not deny. For him the gist of the mailer was not the indisputable fact that sensation precedes thinking, but the fact that man is induced lo think chiefly by the sensations he experiences in Ihe process of his acting upon the outer world. Since this action on (he outer world is prescribed to man by the struggle for existence, the theory of knowledge is closely linked up by Marx with his materialist view of the history of human civilisation. It was not for nothing that Ihe thinker who directed against Feuerbach the thesis we are here discussing wrote in Volume I of his Capital: "By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own 129 nature."^^75^^ This proposition fully reveals its profound meaning only in the light of Marx’s theory of knowledge. We shall see how well this theory is confirmed by the history of cultural development and, incidentally, even by the science of language. It must, however, be admitted that Marx’s epistemology stems directly from that of Feuerbach, or, if you will, it is, properly speaking, the epistemology of Feuerbach, only rendered more profound by the masterly correction brought into it by Marx.

I shall add, in passing, that this masterly correction was prompted by the "spirit of the times”. The striving to examine the interaction between object and subject precisely from the point of view in which Ihe subject appears in an active role, derived from the public mood of the period in which the world-outlook of Marx and Engels was taking shape.  [129•*  The revolution of 1848 was in the of (ing__