Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"

by Friedrich Engels

The static conditions of the solid, liquid and gaseous states therefore represent mechanical work in so far as mechanical work is a measure of heat. Thus the solid crust of the earth, like the water of the ocean, represents in its present form a certain quantity of heat set free which implies the same quantity of mechanical force. By the passing of the vaporous state which was the original form of the earth into the fluid state and later into a condition, for the most part solid, a certain quantity of molecular energy was set free in space, the difficulty of which Herr Duehring whispers does not therefore exist. We are frequently brought to a stop in our cosmic observations by lack of knowledge, but nowhere by insuperable theoretical difficulties. The bridge from statics to dynamics is therefore the push from the outside caused by the cooling or heating occasioned by other bodies which influence certain objects in equipoise. The further we explore Herr Duehring's philosophy, the more impossible appear all his attempts 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.

The idea of purpose furnishes Herr Duehring with his conception of the transition to the organic world. This is again borrowed from Hegel, who in his "logic"—teachings of the concept—mingled with teachings of teleology or of purpose, passes over from chemistry to life. Whichever way we look we discover Herr Duehring to be in possession of Hegelian lore which he gives forth without any embarrassment as his own fundamental philosophy. It would be too long a task to find out here just how far the application of the ideas of purpose is correctly stated and applied to the organic world. The application of the Hegelian "inner purpose" at all events is evident, that is, of a purpose which is imported into nature not through a consciously acting third party, like the wisdom of Providence, but which is inherent in matter itself, which among people who are not well versed in philosophy proceeds to the unthinking supposition of a conscious and all-wise agent; the same Herr Duehring who breaks out into unmeasured moral indignation at the least tendency towards spiritism on the part of other people, tells us that "sex sensations are certainly mainly directed towards the gratification which is bound up in their exercise." He tells us moreover that "poor Nature must always hold the objective world in order" and it has besides to perform acts which require more subtlety from Nature than we usually attribute to her. But nature knows not only why she does this and that. She has not only her housemaid's duties to perform, she has not only subtlety, which is a very pretty accomplishment, in subjective conscious thought, she has also a will, for "we must regard the additional natural desires which occur, such as feeding and propagation, not as directly but as indirectly willed." We now arrive at a consciously thinking and acting nature, and we therefore stand right at the bridge, not indeed between the static and dynamic but between pantheism and deism, or perhaps Herr Duehring is pleased to indulge himself in a little "natural-philosophical half-poetry."

Impossible. All that the realistic philosophy has to say on organic nature is limited to a war against this natural philosophical half-poesy against "Charlatanism with its wanton superficialities and pseudo-scientific mysticism, against the poetic features of Darwinism."

Darwin comes in for a share of blame chiefly because he transferred the Malthusian theory of population from political economy to natural science, because he is entangled by his notions of breeding, so that his work is a sort of unscientific half-poetic attack against design in creation, and that the whole of Darwinism, after what he has borrowed from Lamark has been deducted, is a piece of brutality aimed against humanity.

Darwin had brought home with him as the result of his scientific journeys the conclusion that species of plants and animals are not fixed but are subject to variations. In order to pursue this idea he entered upon experiments in the breeding of plants and animals. Just for this reason England has become a classic land. The scientists of other countries, Germany, for example, have nothing to offer comparable with England in this respect. Moreover, most of the conclusions belong to the last century so that the establishment of the facts presented few difficulties. Darwin found that this artificial breeding produced differences in the species of plants and animals greater than occur among those which are universally recognised as belonging to different species. Therefore it was, up to a certain point, proved that species can change and furthermore there was established the possibility of a common ancestry for organisms which partake of the characteristics of different species.