Fortunately, logic is not life, and man is not intellect alone. And, whilst those same men whose critical faculty is warped, are the men of imagination and passion, in the life of society the intellect plays a very small part, and with a little exaggeration it may even be said that things go their way independent of our actions. Let us leave them to their romances, let them preach, I will not say in the market places where they would not be believed, but in the university lecture rooms, or the halls of congresses and conferences--the doctrine that science (_i.e._ their science) is the ruling queen of life. And we will content ourselves by repeating with Labriola that 'History is the true mistress of all us men, and we are as it were _vitalised_ by History.' V OF ETHICAL JUDGMENT IN FACE OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS _Meaning of Marx's phrase the 'impotence of morality' and his remark that morality condemns what has been condemned by history: Profundity of Marx's philosophy immaterial: Kant's position not surpassed._ Labriola, with his usual piquancy, lashes those who reduce history to a _case of conscience_ or to an _error in bookkeeping_. With this he recalls us to the two-fold consideration (1) that for Marx the social question was not a moral question, and (2) that the analysis made by Marx of capitalism amounts to a proof of the laws which govern a given society, and not indeed to a proof of _theft_, as some have understood it, as though it would suffice to restore to the workman the amount of his wrongfully exacted surplus labour, so that the accounts may turn out in order, and the social question be satisfactorily solved.[65] Leaving the second consideration, which yet gives us an instance of the ludicrous travesties which may be made of a scientific theory, let us pause for a moment over the first formula, which usually gives the greatest offence to non-socialists; so much so that many of them wish to put a little salt in the broth and complete socialism by morality. In actual fact, offence and moral indignation have never been caused less appropriately.