# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1863_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Materialism, or the So-Called Results of Modern Natural Science. 73

On the contrary, it will remain exactly as it is. For if it were to disintegrate, then "the smallest particles of which a body consists" would have to be compelled to leave the place they presently occupy and exchange it for another place. For that, force would absolutely be required. If, then, no force is present, every particle will certainly remain quietly in its place. But now the smallest particles, when they possess no force, are supposed not merely to disintegrate — rather they are then supposed to possess the highest conceivable, utterly immeasurable force, against which the force of the greatest hammer, the consuming power of the most intense fire, must be reckoned as nothing: namely the force to transform themselves — the immortal and eternal atoms — into nothing, to destroy their quality, their being, their all. And they possess this force not only, they also put it into the most energetic activity: the destruction actually and instantaneously takes place! The same conclusion is repeated once more. If we imagine the smallest particles of a primal substance as forceless, "then they must abolish themselves and vanish without a trace into empty space." One may gather from this how necessary it was that the author, right on the back of his title page, set as motto the words of Ludwig Feuerbach: "It is a specific mark of a philosopher not to be a professor of philosophy." Materialist philosophy demands an altogether different kind of philosophical thinking than one expects of a professor of philosophy. — We now come to the proof on which everything preceding and following rests. Dr. Büchner continues: "Equally empty and untenable is the concept of a force without matter. Since it is an exceptionless law that a force can only manifest itself in a substance, it follows that force can be nothing else, and may not be defined otherwise, than as a property of matter, as an "inseparable property inherent in it from eternity.""

That, then, is that "indestructible foundation." It is, to be sure, just as indestructible as the folly of which Solomon says in his Proverbs 27:22: Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him. We answer as follows: 1. The concept of a force is empty and untenable only when it does not refer to a real being that is regarded as the possessor of the force and that is active when an event occurs — since it is only this that leads us to speak of force at all. But that this real being must necessarily be matter is an empty and untenable assertion. 2. Everyone who observes what goes on in his own mind must perceive a succession of thoughts and ideas within himself. Here a real event takes place, of such a kind that thoughts combine with one another, separate from one another, one thought calling forth or suppressing another, and the like. If, then, we generally presuppose forces wherever something happens — and the word force has, in natural science, no