The Sun Worshipper

There is a shrewd warning to be given to all people who are in revolt.
And in the present state of things, I think all men are revolting in that
sense; except a few who are revolting in the other sense. But the warning
to Socialists and other revolutionaries is this: that as sure as fate, if
they use any argument which is atheist or materialistic, that argument
will always be turned against them at last by the tyrant and the slave.
To-day I saw one too common Socialist argument turned Tory, so to speak,
in a manner quite startling and insane. I mean that modern doctrine,
taught, I believe, by most followers of Karl Marx, which is called the
materialist theory of history. The theory is, roughly, this: that all the
important things in history are rooted in an economic motive. In short,
history is a science; a science of the search for food.

Now I desire, in passing only, to point out that this is not merely untrue,
but actually the reverse of the truth. It is putting it too feebly to
say that the history of man is not only economic. Man would not have any
history if he were only economic. The need for food is certainly
universal, so universal that it is not even human. Cows have an economic
motive, and apparently (I dare not say what ethereal delicacies may be in
a cow) only an economic motive. The cow eats grass anywhere and never
eats anything else. In short, the cow does fulfill the materialist theory
of history: that is why the cow has no history. "A History of Cows" would
be one of the simplest and briefest of standard works. But if some cows
thought it wicked to eat long grass and persecuted all who did so; if the
cow with the crumpled horn were worshipped by some cows and gored to death
by others; if cows began to have obvious moral preferences over and above
a desire for grass, then cows would begin to have a history. They would
also begin to have a highly unpleasant time, which is perhaps the same
thing.

The economic motive is not merely not inside all history; it is actually
outside all history. It belongs to Biology or the Science of Life; that
is, it concerns things like cows, that are not so very much alive. Men
are far too much alive to get into the science of anything; for them we
have made the art of history. To say that human actions have depended on
economic support is like saying that they have depended on having two legs.
It accounts for action, but not for such varied action; it is a
condition, but not a motive; it is too universal to be useful. Certainly
a soldier wins the Victoria Cross on two legs; he also runs away on two
legs. But if our object is to discover whether he will become a V.C. or a
coward the most careful inspection of his legs will yield us little or no