DISCUSSION 79 exaggerated development of one of the features, aspects of knowledge into absolute*. (d) The author wants us to remember that Marx, Engels and Lenin valued contributions made to human knowledge by idealism. (e) The author also reminds us that Marx and Engels were the disciples of the greatest philosophical idealist in history, Hegel. Is not the message of these points perfectly clear? Moreover, the validity of the points and their relevance are also not beyond dispute. Let us examine the points. The statement that idealism and materialism are not 'polar opposites* is misleading: they are by definition opposites. The author asserts that the relation between them is dialectical rather than metaphysical. But he has not spelt out what exactly is this dialectical relation, if it is not that of Opposition. Even if we consider the two in the context of development of human thought as a whole—the process is surely dialectical—then also they are to be considered as presenting a un^ty of opposites, but opposites nevertheless. It is true in the course of development of human knowledge each trend gets enriched through criticism of the other, one trend may even assimilate some aspect of the other (probably in a modified form) and thereby enrich itself. Best example is the assimilation of Hegel's idealist dialectics by Marx in an inverted form. But this by no means does away with the opposition between the two. Similarly, the statement that materialism as such is not superior to idealism and idealism as such not inferior is only partially true. It is true, at any stage of development idealism may get an inkling of a new aspect of reality which is still beyond the reach of materialism of the time and in a way of speaking idealism at that stage may be said to be superior to materialism for the time being arid vice versa. But in the fundamental sense materialism is always superior to idealism because it cognises the fundamental nature of reality, i.e. materiality even at its birth, which idealism is not capable of comprehending even in its highest development. This, however, is not to deny that idealism is as much a historical fact as materialism is and that the two have been developing historically through mutual criticism (though the root of the matter lies in social reality). And the mutual criticism—an aspect of the dialectical process of development—is not confined to that between idealism and materialism, mutual criticism among the various schools within each trend has also an important role in the development. We are however not so much concerned here with the historical epistemological side of the matter as with the class attitude to idealist schools from the ideological point of view. As regards the Lenin passage, it is concerned with the epistemological question, rather thfan the ideological. Lenin points out