Reader. Then you catch yourself in your own trap. For if matter is created, as your German writer says, surely there is a Creator.
Büchner. But if matter was in the beginning in God, and was eternal, it is plain that matter could not be created.
Reader. Perfectly true. And therefore, since matter, according to your German authority, has been created, surely matter was not in [pg 642] the beginning in God. But, after all, can you endorse Frank's words without admitting a God? And can you admit a God and a Creator while fighting against creation and the existence of God? Be honest, doctor, and confess that bad indeed must a cause be which cannot be maintained but by clumsy sophistry and shameful contradiction.
V. Immortality Of Force.
Reader. In your theory, doctor, force is immortal. This I cannot understand. Would you tell me how you come to such a conclusion?
Büchner. “Indestructible, imperishable, and immortal as matter is also its immanent force. Intimately united to matter, force revolves in the same never-ending cycle, and emerges from any form in the same quantity as it entered. If it be an undoubted fact that matter can neither be produced nor destroyed, but merely transformed, then it must also be assumed as an established principle that there is not a single case in which force can be produced out of, or pass into, nothing; or, in other words, can be born or annihilated. In all cases where force is manifested it may be reduced to its sources; that is to say, it can be ascertained from what other forces a definite amount of force has been obtained, either directly or by conversion. This convertibility is not arbitrary, but takes place according to definite equivalents, so that not the smallest quantity of force can be lost” (p. 16).
Reader. How do you account for this theory?
Büchner. “Logic and our daily experience teach us that no natural motion or change, consequently no manifestation of force, can take place without producing an endless chain of successive motions and changes, as every effect becomes immediately the cause of succeeding effects. There is no repose of any kind in nature; its whole existence is a constant cycle, in which every motion, the consequence of a preceding motion, becomes immediately the cause of an equivalent succeeding one; so that there is nowhere a gap, nowhere either loss or gain. No motion in nature proceeds from or passes into nothing; and as in the material world every individual form can only realize its existence by drawing its materials from the immense storehouse of matter, so does every motion originate from the equally immense storehouse of forces, to which sooner or later the borrowed quantity of force is again returned. The motion may become latent—i.e., apparently concealed; but nevertheless it is not lost, having merely been converted into equivalent states, from which it will escape again in some shape. During this process force has changed its mode; for force may, though essentially the same, assume in the universe a variety of modes. The various forms may, as already stated, be converted into others without loss, so that the sum-total of existing forces can neither be increased nor diminished, the forms only changing” (pp. 17, 18).
Reader. What do you mean by “forms of forces”?
Büchner. Physics, as I stated to you on another occasion, “makes us acquainted with eight different forces—gravitation, mechanical force, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohesion, which, inseparably united to matter, form and give shape to the world. These [pg 643] forces are, with few exceptions, mutually convertible, so that nothing is lost in the process of conversion” (p. 18).