But the process of becoming a Bible is a fatal process. No one can read much current Marxian literature or discuss politics or economics with those who style themselves orthodox Marxians without coming to the conclusion that the spirit of ecclesiastical dogmatism daily growing weaker in its own home has been transplanted into the religion of revolutionary socialism. Many of those whose eyes have been opened to the truth as expounded by Marx seem to have been thereby granted that faith which is the faculty of believing what we should otherwise know to be untrue, and with them the economic interpretation of history is transformed into a metaphysical dogma of deterministic materialism. The philosopher naturally finds a stumbling-block in a doctrine which is proclaimed but not argued. The historian however grateful he may be for the light which economic interpretation has given him, is up in arms against a theory which denies the individuality and uniqueness of history and reduces it to an automatic repetition of abstract formulæ. The politician when he is told of the universal nature of the class war points triumphantly to the fact that it is a war which those who should be the chief combatants are slow to recognise or we should not find the working classes more ready to vote for a Liberal or a Conservative than for a Socialist. The Socialist must on consideration become impatient with a doctrine that by its fatalistic determinism makes all effort unnecessary. If Socialism must come inevitably by the automatic working out of economic law, why all this striving to bring it about? The answer that political efforts can make no difference, but may bring about the revolution sooner, is too transparently inadequate a solution of the difficulty to deceive anyone for long. Lastly the economist can hardly tolerate a theory of value that seems to ignore entirely the law of supply and demand, and concludes with some justice that either the theory of labour value is nonsense or that Marx was talking about something quite apart in its nature from the value which economics discusses. All these objections are continually being made to Marxianism, and are met by no adequate answer. And just as the sceptical lecturer of the street corner argues that a religion which can make men believe in the story of Balaam's ass must be as nonsensical as that story, so with as little justice the academic critic or the anti-socialist politician concludes that Socialism or at least Marxianism is a tissue of nonsensical statements if these ridiculous dogmas are its fruit.