# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1863_S98
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

not have been a time when it went about homeless?" Well, that is quickly answered. We have already explained that forces are mere properties of matter, and therefore cannot exist separated from matter. "Yes, but the properties do change in matter; what is grass today may perhaps be cow's milk tomorrow, and who knows what it was before that? You must therefore admit that the properties come and go in matter, and so do not remain eternally dwelling in the same matter." Well then, the best thing is for us to say: the forces or properties of matter are nothing but changes in the aggregate state of matter, mere changes of position of the particles of matter. These particles themselves remain always and eternally the same; their properties are therefore inherent in them from eternity. "Good, then we come back again to the beginning. You have not seen these inherent properties, and have therefore assumed that these same properties are changes of the aggregate state. But how can the more or less dense proximity of the several particles — which changes so often — be the property inherent from eternity in each single particle? You are only going around in a circle and not holding fast to a single one of your assertions." Well then, we explain: force and matter are really empty abstractions, by which we merely accommodate ourselves to ordinary usage. Whoever goes to the bottom of it recognizes that there are neither forces nor matter. "Excellent, but why then do you give your explanation, which you nevertheless proclaim as the true and correct one, by means of these very abstractions which, as you say, do not represent the matter correctly? Why do you not show us how it actually stands at the bottom, so that we too may form some notion of what you see there?" Yes, to speak frankly, we ourselves understand of force and matter just about as much as the dog behind the stove. Every attempt to give an explanation of it entangles us in the most hopeless way in contradictions. Speculation is simply not our gift. The most sensible thing would be for us to throw ourselves on empiricism alone and let speculation go. By that, however, we would accomplish nothing against God, and would have to watch how people with somewhat more skill for thinking retain influence, with their old idea of God, in a field that we must in any case dominate. Nothing else remains for us; we too must philosophize. The lack of power to think must be replaced by boldness. In order not merely to assert ourselves in this field, but to win the necessary exclusive mastery of it, we must boldly and again and again declare afresh that we are the true expounders of nature, that we concern ourselves only with facts, that we draw our results only directly from the facts themselves, that everything we say rests on observation of nature, that our research is factual, that we ourselves stand entirely on the side of our energetic age, while the philosophers by trade erect their systems only out of thoughts, and pass off their philosophical claptrap, their learned-sounding gibberish—