Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"

by Friedrich Engels

It is brought forward as a severe and irrefutable reproach to Darwin that he is at an end where the thread of descent fails him. Unfortunately the whole of our science deserves the same reproach. When the thread of descent fails it it is "at an end." It has not yet come to the point of creating organic beings without an ancestry, not even once has it been able to make simple protoplasm or other albuminous bodily forms out of the chemical elements. It can only say therefore with any certainty regarding the origin of life, that it must have come about by a chemical process. But perhaps the philosophy of realism can give us some assistance here since it is engaged with independent organic natural products, without any descent one from another. How can these come into being? By original creation? But up to the present not even the most audacious advocates of spontaneous generation have claimed to create in this way anything except bacteria, fungi, or other very elementary organisms, but not insects, birds, fish or mammals. If these homogeneous products of nature—it is understood for all this discussion that they are organic—are not related through descent, they or their ancestors, then "where the thread of descent breaks" they must have been placed in the world by a separate act of creation, and this again requires a creator, what we call "deism."

Herr Duehring further explains that "it was a piece of superficiality on the part of Darwin to make the mere fact of the sex-composition of qualities the foundation for the existence of these qualities." Here we have again a piece of pure imagination on the part of our profound philosopher. On the contrary Darwin says that natural selection has to do only with the maintenance of variations and not with their origin. This new supposition however of things which Darwin did not say serves to assist us to this deep idea of Duehring. "If a principle of individual variation had been sought in the inner scheme of creation it would have been an entirely rational idea. For it is natural to unite the idea of universal generation with that of sex propagation, and to regard the so-called original creation from the higher point of view, not as absolutely antagonistic to reproduction but even as reproduction itself." And the man who could write this is not ashamed to reproach Hegel with writing jargon.

Let us call a halt to the vexatious and contradictory babble with which Herr Duehring proclaims his wrath against the advance given to science by the theory of Darwin. Neither Darwin nor his followers among the natural scientists have any idea of belittling Lamark's tremendous services, in fact they are the very people who first restored his fame. But we are unable to ignore the fact that in the time of Lamark science was still far from supplied with competent material to enable it to answer the question of the origin of species other than in a prophetic or, as it were anticipatory, manner. In addition to the enormous amount of material in the realm of general, as well as of that of anatomical, botany and zoology, accumulated since that time, two entirely new sciences have since come into existence—the investigation of the development of plant and animal germs (embryology), and the investigation of the organic survivals in the earth's crust which still remain. There is a distinct similarity between the steps in the development of the organic germ to mature organism, and the successive steps by which plants and animals succeed each other in the history of the world. It is just this similarity which has placed the evolution theory on its most secure foundations. The theory of evolution is however still very young and it is beyond question that upon further investigation the rigid Darwinian ideas upon the origin of species will be considerably modified.

But what has the realist philosophy of a positive nature to contribute with respect to the evolution of organic life? "The variation of species is an acceptable supposition, but there exists, in addition, the independent order of the products of nature belonging to the same species without any intervention of descent." According to this we are to conclude that products of unlike species, that is species which vary, are descended from one another, but those of similar species not. But even this is not altogether correct, for he ventures to say of the varying species, "The part played by descent is on the contrary a very secondary activity of nature." There is heredity, then, but it is only to be reckoned as a factor of the second class. Let us be glad that heredity of which Herr Duehring has said so much that is evil and mysterious is at least let in by the back door. It is just the same with natural selection, since after all his moral indignation with respect to the struggle for existence by means of which natural selection fulfils itself he suddenly exclaims, "The most important constituent is to be found in the conditions of life and cosmic conditions, while natural selection as set forth by Darwin may be considered as secondary." Natural selection still exists, even if a factor of the second class, like the struggle for existence, and the clerical malthusian surplus-population theory. That is all, for the rest Herr Duehring refers us to Lamark.

Finally, he warns against misuse of the terms metamorphosis and evolution. Metamorphosis, he says, is a very obscure notion, and the concept of evolution is only admissible in so far as a law of evolution can be really proved. Instead of either of these expressions we should employ the term "composition" and then everything would be all right. It is the same old story over again, Herr Duehring is satisfied if we change the names. If we speak of the evolution of the chicken in the egg we give rise to confusion because we have only an incomplete knowledge of the law of evolution. But if we speak of its "composition" everything becomes clear. We must therefore say no longer "this child is growing nicely" but, "he composes himself splendidly," and we congratulate Herr Duehring upon the fact that he is not only a peer of the author of the Niebelungen Ring in his opinion of himself but in his own particular capacity is also a composer of the future.

Organic World (Conclusion).

"One reflects upon our natural philosophical portion of positive knowledge in order to fix it relatively to all one's scientific hypotheses. Next in importance come all the actual acquisitions of mathematics as well as the leading principles of exact science in mechanics, physics and chemistry and particularly the scientific results in physiology, zoology, and antiquarian investigation."

Herr Duehring speaks in this confident and decided fashion with respect to the mathematical and scientific scholarship of Herr Duehring. One cannot detect in its meager shape and in its scanty and audacious results the extent of positive knowledge which lies behind. Every time the oracle is consulted for a definite statement as regards physics or chemistry we get nothing as regards physics but the equation which expresses the mechanical equivalent of heat, and concerning chemistry only this that all bodies are divisible into elements and combinations of elements. He who can speak as Duehring does about "gravitating atoms" shows at once that he is quite at a loss to understand the difference between an atom and a molecule. Atoms, of course, exist, not with respect to gravitation or any other physical or mechanical form of motion, but only as concerns chemical action. And if the last chapter on organic nature is read, the empty, self-contradictory, assertive, oracular, stupid, circuitous absolute nothingness of the final result lead one to the conclusion that Herr Duehring talks about things of which he knows very little and this conclusion becomes a certainty when we come to his proposal in the course of his writing on organic life (biology) to use the term "composition" instead of evolution. He who can make such a suggestion as that gives evidence that he is not acquainted with the building up of organic bodies.

All organic bodies, the very lowest excepted, develop from small cells by the increment of visible pieces of albumen with a central cell. The cell generally develops an outer skin and the contents are more or less fluid. The lowest cell-bodies develop from one cell; the enormous majority of organic beings are many-celled and among the lower forms these take on similar, and among the higher forms greater variations of, groupings and activities. In the human body for example are bones, muscles, nerves, sinews, ligaments, cartilage, skin, all either made up of cells or originating in them. But for all organic bodies, from the amœba which is a simple and for the most part unprotected piece of albumen with a cell centre in the midst to man, and from the smallest one-celled desmidian to the highest developed plant, the mode is one and the same by which the cells propagate themselves, that is by division. The cell centre is first laced across its midst, the lacing which separates the centre into two knobs becomes stronger and stronger and at last they become separated and two cell centres are formed. The same occurrence takes place in the cell itself. Each of the cell centres becomes the middle point of a collection of cell stuff which by knitting ever closer becomes combined with the other, and finally both of them part and live on as separate cells. Through such repeated cell divisions the full sized animal gradually develops from the germ of the animal egg after fructification and the substitution of used up cells in the full grown animal is brought about similarly. To call such a process "composition" and to speak of the term "evolution" as a purely imaginary term belongs to one who does not know anything of the matter, hard as it is to imagine such ignorance at this date.

We have still somewhat to say with respect to Herr Duehring's views of life in general. Elsewhere he sets forth the following statement with respect to life. "Even the inorganic world is a self-regulated system but one may undertake to speak of life in the proper sense first when the organs and the circulation of matter through special separate channels from a central point to another germ collection of a minor formation begin."