" Man's cognition his situation more or less lags behind the development of the new actual relations which cause that situation to change. But it does keep in wake of the actual relations. Where man's conscious striving for the abolition of old institutions and the establishment of a new legal system is weak, there the way for the new system has not yet been properly paved by the economics of the society. In other words, in history, lack of clear cognition - 'the blunders of immature thought,' 'ignorance' - not infrequently signifies only one thing, namely, that the object to be cognised, that is, the new, nascent things, are still but poorly developed. "

― Georgi Plekhanov , The Materialist Conception of History