Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"

by Friedrich Engels

If life begins where the separate organs begin then we must hold all Haeckel's protozoa (Protistenreich) and probably many others as dead; all organisms at least up to those composed of one cell and those included are not capable of life. If the means of circulation of matter through different channels is the distinguishing mark of life we must place outside of this definition all the upper classes of the colenterata entirely, with the exception of the medusae, and therefore all the polypi and other plant animals are also to be considered as being outside the class of living creatures. And if the circulation of matter through different canals from an inner point is the distinguishing characteristic of life we must reckon all animals as dead which either have no heart or several hearts. Besides these there belong also to this category all worms, starfish and ringed creatures (annuloids and annulous according to Huxley's definition) a portion of the shell fish, crabs, and finally a vertebrate animal, the lancelet (amphioxus) and all plants.

When Herr Duehring therefore undertakes to distinguish life narrowly and strictly, he gives four mutually contradictory modes of distinguishing life, one of which condemns not only the whole of plant life but about half the animal kingdom to eternal death. No one can accuse him of having deceived us when he promised us peculiar results based on individual ideas.

In another place he says "There is a simple fundamental type in nature belonging to all organisms from the lowest to the highest" and this type is to be met "in the subordinate movements of the most undeveloped plants." This is again an absolutely false statement. The simplest type in the whole of organic nature is the cell, and it lies universally at the foundation of the highest organisms. On the other hand there is a substance among the lowest organisms lower even than the cell, the protomoeba, a single piece of undifferentiated protoplasm, without any differentiation, a complete series of monads and the entire class of siphoneae. All of these are connected with the higher organisms only by virtue of the fact that protoplasm is its substantial foundation, and that they fulfill the functions of protoplasm, that is they live and die.

Further Herr Duehring tells us "physiologically the concept of existence consists in this, that it embraces a single nerve apparatus. Sensation is therefore the characteristic of all animal organisms that is the capacity of conscious subjective recognition of circumstances. The sharp line of differentiation between plants and animals consists in the leap to sensation. This distinguishing line cannot any more be abolished by known forms of transition than it can be brought into existence by the logical necessity of externally distinguishable characteristics." And further "Plants are totally and eternally without sensation and are devoid of the faculty for it."

In the first place Hegel says that "sensation is the specific differentiation, the distinguishing mark of the animal." Thus one of Hegel's erudite statements becomes an indubitable truth of the last instance merely by being copied into Herr Duehring's book.

In the second place we now arrive for the first time at the forms of transition between animals and plants. That these intermediate forms exist, that there are organisms concerning which we are unable to say flatly whether they are plants or animals, that we are therefore unable to fix accurately the frontiers between plant and animal life, all these things make Herr Duehring logically anxious to fix a decisively distinguishing line, which in the next breath he declares cannot be thoroughly relied on. But there is no need for us to go to the doubtful region; intermediate between plants and animals are sensitive plants which at the least contact fold their leaves or close their petals. Are insect eating plants utterly without sensation? Even Herr Duehring cannot make such an assertion without indulging in "unscientific half-poetry."

In the third place Herr Duehring is again giving free rein to his imagination when he says that sensation is psychologically existent, even when the nerve apparatus is exceedingly simple. This is found regularly among reptiles yet Herr Duehring is the first to say that they have no sensation because they have no nerves. Sensation is not necessarily bound up with nerves but it is bound up with some albuminous substance the true nature of which has not yet been discovered.

In addition, the biological knowledge of Herr Duehring becomes exceedingly evident in that he is not ashamed to fling at Darwin the question do animals develop from plants? so that it is a question whether he is more ignorant with regard to plants or animals.

Of life in general Herr Duehring can only tell us "The change in the form of matter which fulfills itself by plastic constructive arrangement remains a distinguishing characteristic of the individual life-process."

That is all that we learn of life and with respect to the plastic creative arrangement we sink knee deep in the nonsense of Duehring's jargon. If we want to learn what life is we shall have to look at the problem a little more closely on our own account.