Büchner. The phrase may be incorrect, but the idea is sound, and the argument conclusive.
Reader. Poor doctor! the idea is as inconsistent as the phrase is incorrect; and the argument is not worthy of the name. Let us admit that matter, elements, and atoms have been observed to remain always and everywhere the same. Does it follow that matter, elements, and atoms are indestructible? By no means; it only follows that, be they destructible or [pg 638] not, they have not been actually destroyed. You say that by the destruction or addition of an atom “the world would be disturbed.” Let it be disturbed; what then?
Büchner. Then the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter would be interfered with; which cannot be admitted. The laws of nature are unchangeable. What has been constantly true for the past must be true for ever.
Reader. You are utterly mistaken, doctor. The world may be disturbed by the creation or the annihilation of matter without the laws of nature being interfered with. I admit that the laws of nature are unchangeable; they have been true for the past, and they will be true for ever. But what is the object of these laws? Nothing but the mode of production of the phenomena of the material world. Hence you have a law of gravitation, a law of propagation of sound, a law of impact, a law of reflection and of refraction, and generally laws of motion, but you have no law of existence and no law of substance. Whence it is clear that all your laws of nature would remain exactly the same whether any new portion of matter were brought into being or any portion of existing matter annihilated. Suppose that your own body were annihilated; would any law of nature be upset? Would the sun cease to illuminate the earth? Would the earth cease to revolve round its axis or to attract bodies? Would the ocean cease rolling its waves to the shore? Would fire cease to burn? In one word, would any law of statics or of dynamics cease to be true?
Nor can you decline this supposition by saying that annihilation itself would be against the laws of nature. For all your laws of nature, as I have just remarked, regard the movements, and not the substance, of the material world. Your laws suppose the existence of matter in the same manner as civil laws suppose the existence of civil society; and as these latter are not modified by an increase or a decrease in the number of the individuals subject to them, so neither would the former be modified by any increase or decrease in the number of material elements. There would be, of course, a change in the phenomena themselves, because the execution of the laws would be carried on suitably to the new condition of the case; but the laws would remain the same. Consequently any amount of matter could be annihilated without the least change in the laws of nature. Let the moon be annihilated; the ebb and flow of the ocean will be altered, but the laws of motion will remain the same; for the ebbing and flowing of the waters will still be proportional to the action of the disturbing causes. Let a stone be annihilated in the act of its falling to the ground; the law of attraction will remain unaltered, as it will still be true that every falling body must acquire, under gravitation, a uniformly increasing velocity. Hence the unchangeableness of natural laws cannot be alleged as a proof of the indestructibility of matter; and your argument is worthless. The utmost you can be allowed to assume is that matter, whether destructible or not, has hitherto continued to exist, and no particle of it has ever been annihilated.
This last assertion, however, is admitted by natural philosophers, not because there is any scientific proof of it, but simply because [pg 639] science has no grounds for denying it. Science has no means of ascertaining, for instance, whether any remote star has been annihilated, or any new star created, in the last thousand years; and if the common belief is that no new matter has been created, and no portion of matter annihilated, we owe it, not to science, but to the teaching of the Bible, which represents the work of creation as long ago completed, and the conservation of all created substances as the effect of design. But you, who laugh at revelation, and pretend to substantiate all your assertions by facts, have no right to assume that no matter has ever been annihilated. Hence not only are you unable to show that matter is indestructible, but you cannot even maintain that no particle of matter has ever been destroyed.
But I will no longer insist on this point. I admit that no atom of matter can ever be lost to the world by natural processes. My reason is that the natural actions of bodies, whether physical or chemical, tend merely to the production, modification, or neutralization of movement, and that no amount of change in the movement of an atom can cause the atom to vanish. This is not, however, a discovery of modern chemistry, as you seem to believe. The scholastic philosophers had not the fortune to know modern chemistry; yet they never believed that new compounds were made of new materials, though you recklessly assert that “it was hitherto believed”; but they always uniformly taught that matter was ingenerable and incorruptible. There was therefore scarcely any need of modern chemistry to teach us that no portion of matter can be lost by natural processes. Yet this is not the real question. What we want to know is whether an atom, or any number of atoms, has a necessary existence and cannot be annihilated by God. This is your assumption; and this is what you are unable to show. Your argument is, in fact, nothing but a vicious circle. You say: “There is no God; and therefore matter cannot be annihilated”; and at the same time you say: “Matter cannot be annihilated; and therefore there is no God.” This is, in reality, the covert drift of your argumentation, when from the assumed indestructibility of matter you conclude, first, that matter could not have been created, and, further, that the existence of a Creator is a gratuitous hypothesis. On the other hand, you cannot make good your assertion that matter is indestructible without first denying the existence of a Creator. Such is your nice logic in what you probably consider to be one of your best arguments.
And let me here make a passing remark on the word “immortality,” which you have chosen to designate the pretended indestructibility of matter. Immortality is not simply “existence without end,” but “life without end.” Hence living beings alone can be immortal. Do you assume, then, that a grain of dust or an atom of matter is a living being? If you say yes, where are the facts that will lend a support to such an unscientific doctrine? If you say no, then the immortality of your matter is nothing indeed but a new form of what you would style “philosophical charlatanism.”
To conclude: the indestructibility of matter is a ridiculous invention of ignorant empiricists, who know neither what matter is nor what is philosophical reasoning. [pg 640] They make, indeed, a great deal of noise with their scientific publications; but their ephemeral celebrity is due to an organized system of mutual laudation and to Masonic support, as you know. Let only twenty years pass, and you may be sure that our children will laugh at your celebrities: and if your Force and Matter is to reach them, they will laugh at you too. Common sense cannot slumber for ever; and when it awakes, then will all your infidel scribes be pronounced designing knaves.
Büchner. I thought you would never end, sir; but, long as your answer has been, it has failed to convince me. The force of my argument lies in this: that what can have an end must have had a beginning. If, therefore, matter is not indestructible, it must have had a beginning.