20 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
division at any time, but with a continuance of the broad, wise tolerance which has hitherto prevailed upon both sides the per- manence of the union would seem to be secured.
The fact is that socialism has entered upon a new phase, both in Europe and this country. Modern socialism had its roots in the scientific renascence which began with Darwin, and it natur- ally and inevitably partook of the resultant rationalism. It was inevitably drawn into the phase of the long warfare of science and theology which the new theories provoked. Just as a belief in the new theories of evolution was, for a long time, regarded, on both sides of the controversy, as being synonymous with atheism, so belief in socialism, for a long time, was held by friends and foes alike as being synonymous with atheism. It is a far cry from Liebknecht's i:tatement in 1875, that no one is worthy of the name of a socialist "who does not consecrate him- self to the spread of atheism," and the wild diatribes of Bebel in the same period, to the declaration of the German social- democratic party, in the Erfurt Programm, in 1891, that reli- gious belief is a private matter, and to Bebel's action in advising the wide circulation of Pastor Kutter's book. They Must! — an exhortation to Christians to support the social democracy he- cause they are Christians.
The tide of crude materialism which was at its height in the late sixties and early seventies of the nineteenth century has receded, largely because its battles against equally crude dogmas have won. Christianity has thrown off the shackles of dogma, to a large extent, and returned to its primal social ideals. On the other hand, the blind faith of the early rationalism, with its bitter intolerance, has been modified. When a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal church In America can carry the red card of membership in the socialist party, and when, as at the last convention in Chicago, delegates to the national convention of the socialist party, as loyal Catholics, without any shame or apology to any of their comrades, can go directly from mass to the work of shaping the policy of the socialist party, it is obvious that we are in the presence of a new socialism of a quality and temper undreamed of by Marx and Engels.
