Of far-reaching importance, and at this moment of pressing interest, are two points which I would present in conclusion. I mean the attitude of the social movement towards religion and towards nationality. Because here personal feeling and temperament may easily interfere with the clear vision of the observer, it is doubly necessary to divest oneself of all passion and to deal with these problems objectively. Let us make the attempt. Leaving out of consideration the English working-man, who to-day, as a generation ago, seems to oscillate between pietism and positivism, and who on this point cannot be considered typical because of the well-known peculiar conditions of his development, the proletarian movement doubtless is strongly anti-religious. How comes this?
So far as I see, the opposition to religion comes from two different sources: it has a "theoretical" and a "practical" origin. Theoretically the proletariat and its leaders have become heirs of the liberal "age of illumination." Out of a superficial study of natural sciences have sprung all these anti-religious writings of the years 1860-1880 which in an intoxication of joy announced the first recognition of the atheistic dogma to the world. These writers never rose above the level of "itinerant preachers of materialism," and they have never reached to the level of the Marx-Engels conception of life. The platform of this dogmatic atheism may be considered to-day as entirely something of the past. There is no earnest representative of science anywhere who to-day dares to assert that science means atheism and excludes religion. Thus the attitude of the proletariat towards religion would be entirely free and independent if the ground of its irreligion were merely a theoretic and misleading incursion into the dogmatism of natural science. But the enmity to religion has much deeper grounds. Not only has an enthusiasm for scientific materialism taken hold of the proletariat with special force; but also the enthusiasm for unbelief has been helped greatly in its development by the instinctive feeling, or the clear consciousness, that in the materialistic conception of the world lies the germ of a mighty revolutionary force, well suited to drive authority from all spheres of life. What wonder that the proletariat took hold of it as a useful weapon for the strife; for, as we know, one of the conditions of the very existence of the proletariat lies in a tearing asunder of all the old points of faith. Thus the predilection for materialism and atheism is well explained.