p In their efforts to explain that course, the idealists have never proved able to watch from the standpoint of the "course of things". Thus, Taine thinks that it is the properties of the artist’s environment that account for a work of art. But what properties is he referring to? To the psychological, that is to say, the general psychology of the period in question, whose properties themselves require explanation.  [170•**  When it explains the psychology of a particular society or a particular class, materialism addresses itself to the social structure created by the economic development, and so on. But Taine, who was an idealist, attempted to explain the origin of a social system through the medium of social psychology, thereby getting himself entangled in irresolvable contradictions. Idealists in all lands show little liking for Taine nowadays. The reason is obvious: by environment he understood the general psychology of the masses, the psychology of the "man in the street" at a particular time and in a particular class. To him, this psychology was the court of last instance to which the researcher could appeal. Consequently, he thought that a “great” man always thinks and feels at the behest of the "man in the street”, at dictation from “mediocrities”. Now this is wrong in point of fact, and, besides, offends bourgeois “intellectuals”, who are always prone, at least in some small measure, to count themselves in the category of great men. Taine was a man who, after saying “A”, was unable to carry on and say “B”, thus ruining his own case. The only 171 escape from the contradictions he got entangled in is through historical materialism, which finds the right place for both the “individual” and tha “environment”, for both "the man in the street" and "the man of destiny".

p It is noteworthy that, in France, where, from the Middle Ages right down to 1871, the socio-political development and the struggle between social classes assumed a form most typical of Western Europe, it is easier than anywhere else to discover the causal nexus between .that development and that struggle, on the one hand, and the history of ideologies on the other.

p Speaking of the reason why, during the Restoration in France, the ideas of the theocratic school of philosophy of history were so widespread, Robert Flint has had the following to say: "The success of such a theory, indeed, would have been inexplicable, had not the way for it been prepared by the sensationalism of Gondillac, and had it not been so obviously fitted to serve the interests of a party which represented the opinions of large classes of French society before and after the Restoration."  [171•*  This is true, of course, and it is easy to realise which class it was whose interests found ideological expression in the theocratic school. Let us, however, delve further into French history and ask ourselves: is it not also possible to discover the social causes of the success achieved by sensationalism in pre-revolutionary France? Was not the intellectual movement that produced the theoreticians of sensationalism in its turn an expression of the aspirations of a particular social class? It is known that this was the case: this movement expressed the emancipatory aspirations of the French tiers etat.  [171•**  Were we to proceed in the same direction we would see that, for instance, the philosophy of Descartes gave a clear reflection of the requirements of the economic development and the alignment of social forces of his time.  [171•***  Finally, if we .went back as far as the fourteenth century and turned our attention, for instance, to the romances of chivalry, which enjoyed such popularity at the French court and among the French aristocracy of the 172 period, we would have no difficulty in discovering that these romances mirrored the life and Ihe tastes of the etat referred to.  [172•*  In a word, the curve of the intellectual movement in this remarkable country, which but recently had every right to claim that it "marched at the head of the nations”, runs parallel to the curve of economic development, and that of the socio-political development conditioned by the latter. In view of this, the history of ideology in France is of particular interest to sociology.

p This is something that those who have “criticised” Marx in various tones and keys have not had the least idea of. They have never understood that, though criticism is of course a splendid thing, a certain prerequisite is needed when you undertake to criticise, i.e., an understanding of what you are criticising. Criticising a given method of scientific investigation means determining in what measure it can help discover the causal links existing between phenomena. That is something that can be ascertained only through experience, i.e., through the application of that method. Criticising historical materialism means making a trial of the method of Marx and Engels in a study of the historical movement of mankind. Only then can the strong and the weak points of the method be ascertained. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” as Engels said when explaining his theory of cognition.^^107^^ This applies in full to historical materialism as well. To criticise this dish, you must first have a taste of it. To laste the method of Marx and Engels, you must first be able to use it. To use it properly presupposes a far higher degree of scientific grounding and far more sustained intellectual effort than are revealed in pseudo-critical verbiage on the theme of the " onesidedness" of Marxism.

p The “critics” of Marx declare, some with regret, some in reproach, and some with malice, that to this day no book has appeared, containing a theoretical substantiation of historical materialism. By a “book” they usually understand something like a brief manual on world history written from the materialist viewpoint. At present, however, no such guide can be written either by an individual scholar, however extensive his knowledge, or by a whole group of scholars. A sufficiency of material for that does not yet exist, nor will it exist for a long time. Such material can be accumulated only by means of a lengthy series of investigations carried out in the respective fields of science, with the aid of the Marxist method. In other words, those “critics” who demand a “book” would like to have matters started from the end, i.e., they want a preliminary explanation, from the materialist viewpoint, 173 of that very historical process which is to be explained. In actual fact, a “book” in defence of historical materialism is being written in the measure in which contemporary scholars—mostly, as I have said, without realising that they are doing so—are forced by the present-day state of social science to furnish a materialist explanation of the phenomena they are studying. Thai such scholars are not so few in number is shown convincingly enough by the examples I have quoted above.

p It has been said by Laplace that about fifty years elapsed before Newton’s great discovery was supplemented in any significant degree. So long a period was required for this great truth to be generally understood and for those obstacles to be overcome which were placed in its way by the vortex theory and also perhaps by the wounded pride of mathematicians of Newton’s times.  [173•* 

The obstacles met by present-day materialism as a harmonious and {consistent theory are incomparably greater than those that Newton’s theory came up against on its appearance. Against it are directly and decisively ranged the interests of the class now in power, to whose influence most scholars subordinate themselves of necessity. Materialist dialectic which "regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and ... lets nothing impose upon it”,^^108^^ cannot have the sympathy of the conservative class that the Western bourgeoisie today is. It stands in such contradiction to that class’s frame of mind that ideologists of that class naturally tend to look upon it as something impermissible, improper, and unworthy of the attention both of “respectable” people in general, and of “esteemed” men of learning in particular.  [173•**  It is not surprising that each of these pundits considers himself morally obliged to avert from himself any suspicion of sympathy with materialism. Often enough such pundits denounce materialism the more emphatically, the more insistently they adhere to a materialist viewpoint in their special research.  [173•***  The 174 result is a kind of semi-subconscious "conventional lie”, which, of course, can have only a most injurious effect on theoretical thinking.