In this connection it may not be altogether fanciful to observe that his heredity derived from rabbinical ancestors may account for much that is peculiar in his way of thinking. The excessive acumen, the relentless minuteness with which he pursues his course through details which often seem very unreal, the elaboration which he bestows upon distinctions which are often abstract and artificial, may well be regarded as alien to Western modes of thought. Revolutionary materialism was a strange sphere in which to exercise a logic after the manner of the rabbi. However this may be, we know that when his mind was being formed the Hegelian philosophy was supreme in Germany; and it can hardly be said that the study of Hegel is a good training for the study of history, according to the freest and purest conception of the subject. The study of history, in the highest sense of the word, requires a modest attitude towards objective fact which is not easily attained in the philosophy of the schools. Marx was a German, trained in the school of Hegel; and he passed most of his life in laborious seclusion, in exile and revolt against dominant ideas and institutions. Though a materialist, he does not show sufficient respect for facts, for history. In reading his great work we feel that the facts are in chronic rebellion against the formulas to which he seeks to adapt them. Adam Smith, the founder of Political Economy, was also academic at the outset of his life; but he was a Scotsman of a period when the ablest Scotsmen were trained by French clearness and common sense. And he was not in revolt, like Marx, but in full sympathy with a cause whose time had come, whereas Marx represented a cause which had not yet attained to any considerable degree of clearness. In learning and philosophic power, Marx will compare favourably with Adam Smith; but in historic reasonableness, in respect for fact and reality, Smith is decidedly his superior. In Smith’s great work we see philosophy controlled by fact, by historic knowledge and insight. The work of Marx, in many of its most important sections, is an arbitrary and artificial attempt to force his formulas on the facts of history. Whether the fault lay in the Hegelian philosophy, or in Marx’s use of it, there can be no doubt that its influence has inflicted most serious damage on what might otherwise have been a splendid historical work. We are therefore obliged to say that the historical work of Marx does not by any means rise to the highest conception of history. It is deficient in the free outlook, in the clear perspective, in the sympathy and impartiality which should characterise the best historical achievements. The historical work of Marx is placed at the service of a powerful and passionate propaganda, and of necessity is disturbed and troubled by the function which it is made to serve.