# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1863_S239
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Materialism, or the So-Called Results of Modern Natural Science. 239

functions of the body are not directly ends of life, but are meant to maintain and establish the conditions necessary to the fulfillment of those two ends. The masses of decomposition that arise from wear through function therefore derive chiefly from the nervous system and the muscles; the nerve, in conducting within itself the process that generates sensation or that generates motion, can do this only at the cost of a slight decomposition and disturbance of its chemical constitution; the muscle, in that its individual molecules contract to produce a mechanical force, can likewise develop this intensified attractive force only through altered chemical states, and thus passes, through its function, into decomposition. Both parts, endowed with the most active function among all the organs, stand in the greatest need of continual regeneration through the bloodstream; their strength quickly fails as soon as the continual replenishment by the arterial blood is lacking, and we are therefore justified in expecting from them a very considerable metabolism, and from that a large contribution to the secretions. The remaining parts function either altogether only passively, as do the bones, ligaments, and tendons — their physical properties, which alone are called into service, involve no chemical decomposition, and since their structure, for the sake of its function, had also to be made so firm that it does not itself tend to easy decomposition — so that in these parts the spontaneous dissolution is just as slow and inconsiderable as that produced by function, whereas in those first-named parts it is considerable, as the putrefaction after death shows. . . . We have thus recognized clearly enough here the speculative ground of the necessity of metabolism; it is far more difficult to decide what chemical processes actually take place here in its two branches, that of formation and that of reformation."

Given this candid confession of a renowned physiologist, we must certainly expect to hear the complaint repeated, that it seems scarcely comprehensible how men of the profession can so fail to recognize and overlook the great discoveries of natural science that have emerged so convincingly in the minds of Vogt, Czolbe, Büchner, Moleschott, and their like. Now, in order to give our materialist no occasion to complain that, with regard to metabolism, we have summoned the relevant special science against him, we will for once let his own words stand fully as truth — namely, that we transform ourselves so quickly that within a period of four weeks we have become wholly different and new beings. —

For him who believes in the existence and immortality of the soul, that proposition is, from a religious and moral point of view, entirely a matter of indifference, since only the soul alone — which, despite all change in its inner states, remains ever the same in substance — is responsible for the whole conduct and disposition of man. The matter stands quite differently, however,