HKB
to explain rotation from absence of rotation, or to discover the bridge by which that which is purely static, self-contained, can without disturbance come to be the dynamic, in motion.
We should here be glad to get rid of the whole self-contained condition business. Herr Duehring, however, goes to chemistry and gives us three permanent natural laws established by the philosophy of realism as follows, 1. The constant amount of matter in the universe. 2. The simple chemical elements, and 3. The mechanical forces are unchangeable.
Therefore the impossibility of creating or destroying matter, the simple forms of its existence as far as they exist, and motion, these old, well known facts, inadequately expressed, that is the only positive thing which Herr Duehring is in a position to offer us as a result of his real philosophy of the inorganic world. All these things we have long known. But what we have not known is that they are permanent laws and as such natural properties of the system of things. It is just the same thing over again as in the case of Kant. Herr Duehring takes some universally known expressions, pastes the Duehring label on them and calls them "fundamentally original results and views, system shaping thoughts, profound science."
We have not long to hesitate on this account. Whatever deficiencies the most profound science and the best contrived social theories may have, for once Herr Duehring can say precisely "The quantity of gold in the universe must always remain the same and cannot be increased or diminished any more than matter in general. But unfortunately Herr Duehring does not tell us what we may buy with this gold."
The Organic World.
"From mechanics in rest and motion to the relation of sensation and thought there is a uniform progression of interruptions." With this assurance Herr Duehring spares himself from saying anything further about the origin of life, though one might reasonably expect that a thinker who has followed the development of the world from its self-contained condition, and who is so much at home with the other heavenly bodies would be here at home also. Besides this assurance is only half true in so far as it is not yet completed by means of the log line of Hegel, of which mention has been made already. In all its gradations the transition from one form of evolution to another remains a leap, a differentiating movement. So in the transition from the mechanics of the worlds to those of the smaller amounts of matter in each single world, just so also in that from the mechanics of the mass to that of the molecule--the motion which we examine particularly in physics, so-called, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, just in the same way also the transition from the physics of the molecule to the physics of the chemical atom is completed by a differentiating leap, and it is just the same with the transition from ordinary chemical action to the chemistry of albumen which we call life. Within the sphere of life the changes become less frequent and less remarkable. Therefore Hegel must again correct Herr Duehring.