# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S202
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

nothing in the whole universe except this one thing: that these sixty-three leaden, coppery, tin-like, etc., eternal gods move closer to or farther from one another externally, without purpose or aim. Through their various lying-through-one-another, lying-next-to-one-another, and lying-beside-one-another, they form sun, moon, and stars, the earth and the sea, plants, animals, and men, the dead beings and the living. They themselves have no purpose, for they are unconscious; they serve no purpose, for besides themselves nothing exists that could use them for purposes. "What man calls purpose — indeed the whole of spiritual life: intelligence, judgment, intention, plan, cognition, idea, will, desire, the sensations of pain, of grief, of joy, of enthusiasm, conscience, all moral and immoral impulses, hatred and love, anger and gentleness, wickedness and goodness, godlessness and piety, truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly, understanding and lack of understanding — all these are names for those accumulations of matter which separate themselves out of the aggregate of matter of the brain, "just as urine is secreted from the kidneys," according to a saying of the materialist Vogt. These names themselves, in turn, are actually not names that designate anything, but are just as much independent little heaps of matter as those for whose names they stand. Everything the reader reads here, and whatever he thinks while reading it, is nothing but a number of independent little lumps of matter, which have formed themselves according to eternal laws of nature, that is, through contagious motions.

We must now ask that everyone who wishes to become acquainted with materialism and form a correct judgment about it hold what has just been set forth to be true, at least once, even if only for a moment. True? What does that mean? The doctrine of the materialists consists of little lumps of matter or little droplets of matter; the doctrine of their opponents likewise. Both have come about through the same eternal laws of nature. Both consist of eternal, imperishable, unchangeable gods. Who would dare assign a higher rank to one of these gods over another? Both doctrines are true, and every thought is true, so long as it merely exists; or rather, none is true, except that particular lump or droplet of matter that bears the name "true." Can one, by means of thought, form for oneself a picture of the world as it is? Impossible. There is no picture; everything is only the matter that it itself is. The carbon in the brain can give no picture of what sulfur is, and the sulfur in the brain cannot say what accumulation or shifting of position of matter is. He is a fool, the researcher who takes pains to gain insight into nature. What does he do? He merely secretes little heaps or little droplets of matter from his own brain. That is what the materialist does. His opponent does the very same. Which of the two, then, gains reasonable and correct insights? Correct and reasonable insights? To what end? There are none; there are only shiftings of position of the particles of matter. But how can I even know whether all this is true? Know? Whether it be true? Knowing and being true are themselves, after all, only different shiftings of position of the