# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S205
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Materialism, or the So-Called Results of Modern Natural Science. 205

admit that the world would thereby be thrown into confusion; the laws of
gravitation would have to suffer a disturbance, the necessary and
unalterable equilibrium of matter would have to suffer harm."

How mighty are the traces of God in nature! Even a determined
atheist feels himself compelled, as soon as he wishes to say anything
reasonably sensible about nature, to fall in with the language of teleological
(purpose-demonstrating) observation of nature. Are the "smallest atoms" so
precisely calculated and numbered for the structure of the world that not one
speck of dust too much or too little is present for this structure, that the
vanishing or the appearance of a single one of these "infinitely small beings"
would throw the "harmoniously ordered whole of the world" (Humboldt), the
cosmos, into confusion; are they spatially distributed in such a way that
their larger accumulations mutually maintain the balance; is this
equilibrium necessary — then it is possible only to Unreason to explain that
the assumption of a divine intelligence ruling over these substances must be
rejected as absurd by right and true insight into nature. What sense can the
necessity of an equilibrium of substances have here, if not this one, the only
one that is possible? But it is this: in the abolition of the equilibrium, in the
general confusion necessarily arising from it, in a continuing chaotic
collapse of substances, in a planless, alternating falling-together and flying-
apart of the constituent parts of the world, it is utterly impossible that the
intended harmonious order of the whole should remain in existence, that the
arising of wholly purposeless motions and a painful, lingering life of
misbegotten creatures should be avoided, that anything beautiful, good,
noble, useful, or pleasant should be produced as a lasting property. If, then,
the intention of producing something beautiful and good in the world is to
be carried out, it is necessary — and necessary solely for the sake of this
intention — that the substances be kept in equilibrium. But intentions are
possible only in an intelligence. Spiritless and unconscious substances have
neither intentions nor plans. If, then, such an arrangement of substances is
given as makes possible and actually presents the beautiful and the good and
a fixed order, and this arrangement is at the same time declared necessary,
that is a confession of the divine intention revealing itself in the world; that
is already an assertion that a power, wisdom, and goodness ruling and
governing the world are present, and thereby an author is attested who,
though not himself falling directly under the senses along with the
purposeful work itself, is nonetheless present. That the intention itself
cannot be assigned to sensory perceptions, but is only added in thought by
the one contemplating the purposeful work, alongside the sensory
perception, changes nothing in the matter. Everyone would rightly consider
a fool the man who, recognizing the intention behind another's speech,
wished on that account to ascribe that intention to himself, because he had
not perceived