A Discussion With An Infidel.
Dr. Louis Büchner's work, Kraft und Stoff, first appeared in Germany in the year 1855, and met with such a favorable reception by a numerous class of ignorant or wicked progressionists[95] that from that year up to the end of 1870 it passed through ten German editions, without counting the several translations into other languages. The present writer had lately the fortune, or the misfortune, to be presented with an English copy of this abominable work,[96] and was informed that the knights of the square and the trowel had taken a special interest in its propagation. It could not be otherwise; for the work itself is a masonic work. No one who knows the true character of freemasonry, and has read the book, can have the least doubt of its masonic origin. Only a mason of the blackest dye could have displayed such a cool effrontery, artful dishonesty, and diabolic malice as the author of Force and Matter did in almost every page of his little volume. Dr. Büchner is one of those dangerous men who have a great talent for perverting truth. He knows how to dazzle the simple with brilliant quotations, how to perplex the acute with unanswerable riddles, how to entangle the cautious in a web of plausible objections. He knows how to supplant reason by rhetoric; and the more embarrassing his case, the greater is his assurance and the higher his pretension. It is in the name of science that he pretends to speak. Such is the fashion just now. Secret societies began their open war against the church and against God in the name of philosophy; when beaten on this ground, they appealed to liberality, then to progress, then to civilization, and now to science. All these words, on their lips, were lies. Freemasons and their cognate societies have never [pg 434] been fond of real “philosophy,” and never had truly “liberal” views. The world never made any “progress” in the right direction when it followed them; their pretended “civilization” never meant anything else than the tyrannical subjugation of the church by “civil” powers. And now their “science,” so far as it is theirs, is only a travesty and prostitution of truth. The world owes nothing to them except the increase of crime, the loss of public honesty, and the threatened triumph of villany.
With Dr. Büchner, as with many others of the same ilk, science is a mere pretext. His real object is to attack God's existence, a future life, human liberty, and all those truths which underlie sound philosophy, morality, and religious belief. A work so well calculated to do harm, and which has already infected with its poison a numerous class of readers, needs refutation, and we will engage in the unpleasant task. We hope we shall be able to show that Dr. Büchner's Force and Matter, all its pretensions notwithstanding, is, in a philosophical point of view, a complete failure. One ounce of truth and a cartload of lies is just what the doctor dispenses to his benighted admirers throughout the pages of his baneful production.
To make things clearer, and to give Dr. Büchner the best opportunity of speaking for himself, we have thought of putting the whole discussion in the form of a dialogue between the doctor and ourselves. We know that a lengthy conversation with such a sworn enemy of truth may prove disgusting in a high degree, as he will utter nothing but sophisms or blasphemies. But the sophist must be unmasked and the blasphemer confounded. We hope our readers will excuse us for paying such attention to an infidel writer; we would have ignored him altogether, if his work were not as dangerous as it is unworthy of a doctor.
I. Flippancy And Scholasticism.
Reader. Indeed, doctor, I fear that your Force and Matter will make you a bad reputation. Our most esteemed philosophers say that you are a sophist, and that a man of your attainments cannot be a sophist but by deliberate choice. They evidently imply that you are a knave and an impostor. As for myself, I confess that I do not see the cogency of your reasonings; but, before declaring you a knave and an impostor, I should like to hear from your own mouth what you may have to say in your behalf.
Büchner. I am not surprised, sir, at anything said against me. When I published my work, “I knew that my attempt was bold, and that I should have to sustain a fierce struggle with the prejudices of the age” (p. viii.) But “things cannot be represented different from what they are; and nothing appears to me more perverse than the efforts of respectable naturalists to introduce orthodoxy in the natural sciences” (p. xvii.) You say that our most esteemed philosophers call me a sophist. You mean the schoolmen, of course; in fact, the scholastic philosophy, still riding upon its high though terribly emaciated horse, conceives that it has long ago done with our theories, and has consigned them, ticketed materialism, sensualism, determinism, etc., to the scientific lumber-room, or, as the phrase goes, has assigned them their historical value. But this philosophy, my dear sir, sinks daily in the [pg 435] estimation of the public, and loses its ground (p. xviii.)
Reader. I would remark, with your permission, that the public is not nowadays a very acute judge of these matters. For what does the public know of scholastic philosophy?
Büchner. By the public I mean the scientific world, sir.