From this point of view too, I entirely agree with Labriola in regarding as somewhat strange the inquiries made concerning the supposed forerunners and remote authors of historical materialism, and as quite mistaken the inferences that these inquiries will detract from the importance and originality of the theory. The Italian professor of economics to whom I referred at the beginning, when convicted of a plagiarism, thought to defend himself by saying that, at bottom, Marx's idea was not peculiar to Marx; hence, at worst, he had robbed a thief. He gave a list of forerunners, reaching back as far as Aristotle. Just lately, another Italian professor reproved a colleague with much less justice for having forgotten that the economic interpretation had been explained by Lorenzo Stein before Marx, I could multiply such examples. All this reminds me of one of Jean Paul Richter's sayings: that we hoard our thoughts as a miser does his money; and only slowly do we exchange the money for possessions, and thoughts for experiences and feelings. Mental observations attain real importance through the realisation in thought and an insight into the fulness of their possibilities. This realisation and insight have been granted to the modern socialist movement and to its intellectual leaders Marx and Engels. We may read even in Thomas More that the State is a conspiracy of the rich who make plots for their own convenience: _quaedam conspiratio divitum, de suis commodis reipublicae nomine tituloque tractantium_, and call their intrigues laws: _machinamenta jam leges fiunt_.[9] And, leaving Sir Thomas More--who, after all, it will be said, was a communist--who does not know by heart Marzoni's lines: _Un' odiosa Forza il mondo possiede e fa nomarsi Dritto_....[10] But the materialist and socialist interpretation of the State is not therefore any the less new. The common proverb, indeed, tells us that interest is the most powerful motive for human actions and conceals itself under the most varied forms; but it is none the less true that the student of history who has previously examined the teachings of socialist criticism, is like a short-sighted man who has provided himself with a good pair of spectacles: he sees quite differently and many mysterious shadows reveal their exact shape.