For another reason, also, the attempt to base a political theory upon a philosophical doctrine is undesirable.  The philosophical doctrine of materialism, if true at all, is true everywhere and always; we cannot expect exceptions to it, say, in Buddhism or in the Hussite movement.  And so it comes about that people whose politics are supposed to be a consequence of their metaphysics grow absolute and sweeping, unable to admit that a general theory of history is likely, at best, to be only true on the whole and in the main.  The dogmatic character of Marxian Communism finds support in the supposed philosophic basis of the doctrine; it has the fixed certainty of Catholic theology, not the changing fluidity and sceptical practicality of modern science.

Treated as a practical approximation, not as an exact metaphysical law, the materialistic conception of history has a very large measure of truth.  Take, as an instance of its truth, the influence of industrialism upon ideas.  It is industrialism, rather than the arguments of Darwinians and Biblical critics, that has led to the decay of religious belief in the urban working class.  At the same time, industrialism has revived religious belief among the rich.  In the eighteenth century French aristocrats mostly became free-thinkers; now their descendants are mostly Catholics, because it has become necessary for all the forces of reaction to unite against the revolutionary proletariat.  Take, again, the emancipation of women.  Plato, Mary Wolstonecraft, and John Stuart Mill produced admirable arguments, but influenced only a few impotent idealists.  The war came, leading to the employment of women in industry on a large scale, and instantly the arguments in favour of votes for women were seen to be irresistible.  More than that, traditional sexual morality collapsed, because its whole basis was the economic dependence of women upon their fathers and husbands.  Changes in such a matter as sexual morality bring with them profound alterations in the thoughts and feelings of ordinary men and women; they modify law, literature, art, and all kinds of institutions that seem remote from economics.

Such facts as these justify Marxians in speaking, as they do, of “bourgeois ideology,” meaning that kind of morality which has been imposed upon the world by the possessors of capital.  Contentment with one’s lot may be taken as typical of the virtues preached by the rich to the poor.  They honestly believe it is a virtue—­at any rate they did formerly.  The more religious among the poor also believed it, partly from the influence of authority, partly from an impulse to submission, what MacDougall calls “negative self-feeling,” which is commoner than some people think.  Similarly men preached the virtue of female chastity, and women usually accepted their teaching; both really believed the doctrine, but its persistence was only possible through the economic power of men.  This led erring women to punishment here on earth, which made further punishment hereafter seem probable.  When the economic penalty ceased, the conviction of sinfulness gradually decayed.  In such changes we see the collapse of “bourgeois ideology.”