# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1863_S242
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

God, with joy, for this happy return of our child. — Wife! whither do you let yourself be driven by your dark delusion? You seem to take the most sublime discovery of the human spirit for madness. Oh forgive her, you spirit of a Feuerbach, and you of a Vogt, of a Büchner! Wife, do you truly believe this one is your son? Do you see, over there on the green slope at the edge of the brook, that grazing cow, and the traveler passing by it? Just as little as that green turf and that clear brook and that grazing cow are one and the same thing as the wanderer journeying along with his staff, just as little are the woman who conceives and the woman who bears one and the same person. She who bore was still cow and grass and brook when the supposedly same woman conceived; and she who conceived had already, long since, after repeated change, hastened back into the bosom of Mother Earth in the unstoppable and eternal flux of all things, or hovered up and down on the wings of the wind with the hurrying clouds, by the time the supposedly same woman gave birth! And you believe that you conceived and bore this one? That he is your child and mine? You, a combination of matter that has stood together as a human being only these few weeks past — do you believe you have the right to claim from him the name of mother, from him who has already changed his apparent mother several hundred times, or rather has changed himself, and could never see his true mother, because he himself was never born? In the name of science, in the name of truth and justice, do not presume to what does not belong to you; do not credit yourself with what you can only believe, in deceptive delusion, that you have done and suffered for him. I declare, in the most definite terms, that I am not his father. — Dearest husband! would you deny even me, your faithful wife, who, since we vowed each other love and loyalty unto death at the altar, has scarcely ever left your side, who has faithfully shared sorrow and joy with you for so many years, who has clung to you in constant love up to this very moment? Would you now do me the disgrace of denying the name of father to him whom we, without a doubt ever being possible, watched flourish as our son under our shared care and concern, and who has always repaid our love with much joy in return? No, you are ill. A little rest will do you good. — Dear wife! for anything in the world, do not take me for mad. My mind sees clearly, more clearly than ever before. Science has taught me to attend to the eternal flux and change of things, which must escape your unscientific gaze. Say nothing to me of the vow at the altar. The eternal cycle of all things permits no promise, no vow — however solemnly it may have been made — to remain rightfully in force for longer than four weeks. With the transformation of substances, every bond that an earlier combination of the elements of the body has woven dissolves, every covenant it may have concluded. We are, in truth, entirely different persons from those of whom you say they swore love and loyalty to each other at the altar. Truth, justice, and science together demand that such a