Reader. This is a very poor excuse, dear doctor. Theologians are not debarred from dealing with natural sciences. To mention no others, Copernicus was a canon; Secchi is a Jesuit; Moigno is a priest. Moreover, the subject of the question is not natural science, but your sophistry; and you cannot deny that ecclesiastical studies make men competent to judge of logical blunders. But, leaving all this aside, did you not try to refute the Allgemeine Zeitung, though you pretend that “in struggling with such pen-heroes, it seems to you that you are acting like Don Quixote” (p. xxviii.)? Did you not fight, also, against Mr. Karl Gutzkow, although he, “as is well known, has never impeded the daring flight of his genius by the ballast of science” (p. xxix.)? And, to omit others, did you not do your best to answer the Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung, although it meets you, as you say, “with theological eccentricity and rodomontades” (p. xxxvii.)? It would appear, then, that you are not afraid of accepting battle when you have any hope of overcoming your adversary. And therefore, when you shrink from answering your Catholic opponents, it is evident that you do so only because with them you have no hope of success.
Büchner. You are quite mistaken, sir.
Reader. No, indeed. I am certain that you cannot hold your ground against a Catholic opponent, and I am ready to show you immediately that such is really the case. I have already told you that your Force and Matter is a book full of sweeping assertions, of which no proof is given. You challenged me to substantiate the charge, and I have accepted the challenge. I say, then, that your very first proposition, on which all the other arguments employed in your work are ultimately based, is one of those assertions of which no proof is or can be given. Do you accept the battle on this ground?
Büchner. I do.
Reader. Please, then, what do you consider to be the fundamental proposition of your work?
Büchner. It is this: “No matter without force, and no force without matter” (p. 2).
Reader. Is this proposition altogether universal, so as to admit of no possible exception?
Büchner. Yes, sir, absolutely universal, without any possible exception.
Reader. Then please tell me on what grounds such an absolute universality can be established.
Büchner. On many grounds. First, as Dubois-Reymond profoundly remarks, “fundamentally considered, there are neither forces nor matter. Both are merely abstractions, assumed from different points of view, of things as they are. They supplement and presuppose each other. Separately they do not exist. Matter is not like a carriage, to which the forces, like horses, can be put or again removed from. A particle of iron is, and remains, the same, whether it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, rushes along in the wheel of the steam-engine, or circulates in the blood through the temples of the poet. These qualities are eternal, inalienable, and untransferable” (pp. 1, 2).