Force and Matter--Empirico-Philosophical Studies Intelligibly Rendered, 1855
This is one of the most successful, and early, statements on
Materialism stemming from the conclusions of the New Science.
Force and Matter
No force without matter---no matter without force! Neither can be thought of per se;
separated, they become empty abstractions. Imagine matter without force, and the minute
particles of which a body consists, without that system of mutual attraction and repulsion
which holds them together and gives form and shape to the body; imagine the molecular
forces of cohesion and affinity removed, what then would be the consequence? The matter
must instantly break up into a shapeless nothing. We know in the physical world of no
instance of any particle of matter which is not endowed with forces, by means of which it
plays its appointed part in some form or another, sometimes in connection with similar or
with dissimilar particles. Nor are we in imagination capable of forming a conception of
matter without force. . . . Force without matter is equally an idle notion. It being a law
admitting of no exception that force can only be manifested in matter, it follows that
force can as little possess a separate existence as matter without force....
What are the philosophical consequences of this simple and natural truth? That those
who talk of a creative power, which is said to have produced the world out of itself, or
out of nothing, are ignorant of the first and most simple principle, founded upon
experience and the contemplation of nature. How could a power have existed not manifested
in material substance, but governing it arbitrarily according to individual views? Neither
could separately existing forces be transferred to chaotic matter and produce the world in
this manner; for we have seen that a separate existence of either is an impossibility. It
will be shown in the chapter which treats of the imperishability of matter that the world
could not have originated out of nothing. A nothing is not merely a logical but also an
empirical nonentity. The world, or matter with its properties which we term forces, must
have existed from eternity and must last forever---in one word, the world cannot have been
created. The notion "eternal" is certainly one which, with our limited
faculties, is difficult of conception. The facts, nevertheless, leave no doubt as to the
eternity of the world....
Immortality of Matter
Matter is immortal, indestructible. There is not an atom in the universe which can be
lost. We cannot, even in thought, remove or add an atom without admitting that the world
would thereby be disturbed and the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter
interfered with. It is the great merit of modern chemistry to have proved in the most
convincing manner that the uninterrupted change of matter which we daily witness, the
origin and decay of organic and inorganic forms and tissues, do not arise, as was hitherto
believed, from new materials, but that this change consists in nothing else but the
constant and continuous metamorphosis of the same elementary principles, the quantity and
quality of which ever is, and ever remains, the same. Matter has, by means of the scales,
been followed in all its various and complicated transitions, and everywhere has it been
found to emerge from any combination in the same quantity as it has entered. The
calculations founded upon this law have everywhere proved to be perfectly correct. .. .
How can anyone deny the axiom that out of nothing, nothing can arise? The matter must
be in existence, though previously in another form and combination, to produce or to share
in any new formation. All atom of oxygen, of nitrogen, or of iron, is everywhere and under
all circumstances the same thing, endowed with the same immanent qualities, and can never
in all eternity become anything else. Be it wheresoever it will, it must remain the same;
from every combination, however heterogeneous, must it emerge the self-same atom. But
never can an atom arise anew or disappear: it can only change its combinations. For these
reasons is matter immortal: and for this reason is it, as already shown, impossible that
the world can have been created. How could anything be created that cannot be annihilated?
. . .
There exists a phrase, repeated ad nauseam, of "mortal body and immortal
spirit." A closer examination causes us with more truth to reverse the sentence. The
body is certainly mortal in its
individual form, but not in its constituents. It changes not merely in death, but, as
we have seen, also during life: however, in a higher sense it is immortal, since the
smallest particle of which it is composed cannot be destroyed. On the contrary, that which
we call "spirit" disappears with the dissolution of the individual material
combination; and it must appear to any unprejudiced intellect as if the concurrent action
of many particles of matter had produced an effect which ceases with the cause.
Dignity of Matter
To despise matter and our own body, because it is material---to consider nature and the
world as dust which we must endeavor to shake off---nay, to torment our own body, can only
arise from a confusion of notions, the result of ignorance or fanaticism. Different
feelings animate him who has, with the eyes of an observer, followed matter in its
recondite gyrations, who has marked its various and manifold phenomena. He has learned
that matter is not inferior to but the peer of spirit; that one cannot exist without the
other; and that matter is the vehicle of all mental power, of all human and earthly
greatness. We may, perhaps, share with one of our greatest naturalists his enthusiasm for
matter, "the veneration of which formerly called forth an accusation." Whoever
degrades matter, degrades himself; who abuses his body, abuses his mind and injures
himself to the same degree as, in his foolish imagination, he believed to have profited
his soul. We frequently hear those persons contemptuously called materialists, who do not
share the fashionable contempt for matter but endeavor to fathom by its means the powers
and laws of existence; who have discerned that spirit could not have built the world out
of itself, and that it is impossible to arrive at a just conception of the world without
an exact knowledge of matter and its laws. In this sense, the name of materialist can
nowadays be only a title of honor. It is to materialists that we owe the conquest over
matter and a knowledge of its laws, so that, almost released from the chains of
gravitation, we fly with the swiftness of the wind across the plain and are enabled to
communicate, with the celerity of thought, with the most distant parts of the globe.
Malevolence is silenced by such facts; and the times are past in which a world, produced
by a deceitful fancy, was considered of more value than the reality....
Increased knowledge has taught us to have more respect for the matter without and
within us. Let us, then, cultivate our body no less than our mind; and let us not forget
that they are inseparable, so that which profits the one, profits the other! Mens sana
in corpore sano. On the other hand, we must not forget that we are but a vanishing,
though necessary, part of the whole, which sooner or later must again be absorbed in the
universe. Matter in its totality is the mother, engendering and receiving again all that
exists.
Immutability of the Laws of Nature
The laws according to which nature acts, and matter moves, now destroying, now
rebuilding, and thus producing the most varied organic and inorganic forms, are eternal
and unalterable. An unbending, inexorable necessity governs the mass. "The law of
nature," observes Moleschott, "is a stringent expression of necessity."
There exists in it neither exception nor limitation, and no imaginable power can disregard
this necessity. A stone not supported will in all eternity fall toward the center of the
earth; and there never was, and never will be, a command for the sun to stand still. The
experience of thousands of years has impressed upon the investigator the firmest
conviction of the immutability of the laws of nature, so that there cannot remain the
least doubt in respect to this great truth.
Science has gradually taken all the positions of the childish belief of the peoples; it
has snatched thunder and lightning from the hands of the gods; the eclipse of the stars,
and the stupendous powers of the Titans of the olden time, have been grasped by the
fingers of man. That which appeared inexplicable, miraculous, and the work of a
supernatural power, has, by the torch of science, proved to be the effect of hitherto
unknown natural forces. The power of spirits and gods dissolved in the hands of science.
Superstition declined among cultivated nations, and knowledge took its place. We have the
fullest right, and are scientifically correct, in asserting there is no such thing as a
miracle; everything that happens does so in a natural way---i.e., in a mode
determined only by accidental or necessary coalition of existing materials and their
immanent natural forces. No revolution on earth or in heaven, however stupendous, could
occur in any other manner.
It was no mighty arm reaching down from the ether which raised the mountains, limited
the seas, and created man and beast according to pleasure, but it was effected by the same
forces which to this day produce hill and dale and living beings; and all this happened
according to the strictest necessity....
The fate of man resembles the fate of nature. It is similarly dependent on natural
laws, and it obeys without exception the same stringent and inexorable necessity which
governs all that exists. It lies in the nature of every living being that it should be
born and die; none has ever escaped that law; death is the surest calculation that can be
made, and the unavoidable keystone of every individual existence. The supplications of the
mother, the tears of the wife, the despair of the husband, cannot stay his hands.
"The natural laws," says Vogt, "are rude unbending powers, which have
neither morals nor heart." No call can awaken from the sleep of death; no angel can
deliver the prisoner from the dungeon; no hand from the clouds reaches bread to the
hungry....
Apparent exceptions from the natural order have been called miracles, of which there
have been many at all times. Their origin must be ascribed partly to superstition, and
partly to that strange longing after what is wonderful and supernatural, peculiar to human
nature. It is somewhat difficult for rnan, however evident the facts, to convince himself
of the conformity which surrounds him; it creates in him an oppressive feeling, and the
desire never leaves him to discover something which runs counter to this conformity. This
desire must have had a larger sphere among savage and ignorant tribes. We should only
waste words in our endeavor to prove the natural impossibility of a miracle. No educated,
much less a scicntific, person, who is convinced of the immutable order of things, can
nowadays believe in miracles....
It is not within our province to concern ourselves with those who, in their attempts to
explain the secret of existence, turn to faith. We are occupied with the tangible sensible
world, and not with that which every individual may imagine to exist.
What this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a
universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The theologians, with their
articles of faith, must be left to themselves; so the naturalists with their science: they
both proceed by different routes. The province of faith rests in human dispositions, which
are not accessible to science; and even for the conscience of the individual, it does not
appear impossible to keep faith and science separate. A respectable naturalist recently
gave the ingenuous advice that we should keep two consciences, a scientific and a
religious conscience, which for the peace of our mind we should keep perfectly separate,
as they cannot be reconciled. This process is now known by the technical expression of
"bookkeeping by double entry." We said the advice was ingenuous, because he
whose conviction permits him to keep such a conscience by double entry stands in no need
of advice.
Periods of the Creation of the Earth
The investigations of geology have thrown a highly interesting and important light on
the history of the origin and gradual development of the earth. It was in the rocks and
strata of the crust of the earth, and in the organic remains, that geologists read, as in
an old chronicle, the history of the earth. In this history they found the plainest
indications of several stupendous successive revolutions, now produced by fire, now by
water, now by their combined action. These revolutions afforded, by the apparent
suddenness and violence of their occurrence, a welcome pretext to orthodoxy to appeal to
the existence of supernatural powers, which were to have caused these revolutions in order
to render, by gradual transitions, the earth fit for certain purposes. This successive
periodical creation is said to have been attended with a successive creation of new
organic beings and species. The Bible, then, was right in relating that God had sent a
deluge over the world to destroy a sinful generation. God with His own hands is said to
have piled up mountains, planed the sea, created organisms, etc.
All these notions concerning a direct influence of supernatural or inexplicable forces
have melted away before the age of modern science. Like astronomy, which with mathematical
certainty has measured the spaces of the heavens, so does modern geology, by taking a
retrospective view of the millions of years which have passed, lift the veil which has so
long concealed the history of the earth and has given rise to all kinds of religious and
mysterious dreams. It is now known that there can be no discussion about these periodic
ereatiorts of the earth of which so much was said, and which to this day an erroneous
conception of nature tries to identify with the so-called days of creation of the Bible,
but that the whole past of the earth is nothing but an unfolded present.
However probable it may at first sight appear that the changes, the traces of which we
find in the crust of the earth, must have resulted from sudden and violent convulsions,
closer observation teaches, on the contrary, that the greater portion of these changes is
merely the result of a gradual, slow action, continued through immeasurably long periods
of time; and that this action may still be observed going on, though on so reduced a scale
that the effects do not particularly strike us. "For the earth," says
Burmeister, "is solely produced by forces which, with corresponding intensity, are
still acting; it has never essentially been subjected to more violent catastrophies; on
the other hand, the period of time in which the change was effected is immense, etc. What
is really surprising and stupendous in the process of development of the immeasurable time
within which it was effected."
We see at present all these slow and local effects, which millions of years have
produced in their entirety, and cannot, therefore, divest ourselves of the idea of a
direct creative power, whilst we are merely surrounded by the natural effects of natural
forces The whole science of the conditions of development of the earth is however, the
greatest victory over every kind of faith in an extramundane authority. This science,
supported by the knowledge of surrounding nature and its governing forces, is enabled to
trace the history of what has happened in infinite periods of time with approximating
exactness, frequently with certainty. It has proved that everywhere, and at all times,
only those materials and natural forces were in activity by which we are at present
surrounded. Nowhere was a point reached, when it was necessary to stop scientific
investigation and to substitute the influence of unknown forces. Everywhere it was
possible to indicate or to conceive the possibility of visible effects from the
combination of natural conditions; everywhere existed the same law and the same matter.
Personal Continuance
A spirit without body is as unimaginable as electricity or magnetism without metallic
or other substances on which these forces act. We have equally shown that the animal soul
does not come into the world with any innate intuitions, that it does not represent an ens
per se, but is a product of external influences, without which it would never have
been called into existence. In the face of all these facts, unprejudiced philosophy is
compelled to reject the idea of an individual immortality and of a personal continuance
after death. With the decay and dissolution of its material substratum, through which
alone it has acquired a conscious existence and become a person, and upon which it was
dependent, the spirit must cease to exist. All knowledge which this being has acquired
relates to earthly things; it has become conscious of itself in, with, and by these
things; it has become a person by its being opposed against earthly, limited
individualities. How can we imagine it to be possible that, torn away from these necessary
conditions, this being should continue to exist with self-consciousness and as the same
person? It is not reflection but obstinacy and as the same person? It is not reflection
but obstinacy, not science but faith, which supports the idea of a personal
continuance....
Free Will
Man is a product of nature in body and mind. Hence not merely what he is but also what
he does, wills, feels, and thinks depends upon the same natural necessity as the whole
structure of the world Only a superficial observation of human existence could lead to the
conclusion that the actions of nations and of individuals were the result of a perfectly
free will. A closer inquiry teaches us, on the contrary, that the connection of nature is
so essential and necessary, that free will, if it exist, can only have a very limited
range; it teaches us to recognize in all these phenomena fixed laws which hitherto were
considered as the results of free choice. "Human liberty, of which all boast' says
Spinoza, "consists solely in this, that man is conscious of his will, and unconscious
of the causes by which it is determined "
That this view is no longer theoretical, but sufficiently established by fact is
chiefly owing to that interesting new science of statistics, which exhibts fixed laws in a
mass of phenomena that until now were considered to be arbitrary and accidental. The data
for this truth are frequently lost in investigating individual phenomena, but taken
collectively they exhibit a strict order, inexorably ruling men and humanity. It may,
without exaggeration, be stated that at present most physicians and practical
psychologists incline to the view in relation to free will that human actions are, in the
last instance, dependent upon a fixed necesity, so that in every individual case free
choice has only an extremely limited, if any, sphere of action . . .
The conduct and actions of every individual are dependent upon the character, manners,
and modes of thought of the nation to which he belongs. These again are, to a certain
extent, the necessary product of external circumstances under which they live and have
grown up....
If the nations are thus in the aggregate, in regard to character and history, dependent
upon external circumstances, the individual is no less the product of external and
internal natural actions, not merely in relation to his physical and moral nature but in
his actions. These actions depend necessarily, in the first instance, upon his
intellectual individuality. But what is this intellectual individuality which determines
man and prescribes to him, in every individual case, his mode of action with such force
that there remains for him but a minute space for free choice; what else is it but the
necessary product of congenital physical and mental dispositions in connection with
education, example, rank, property, sex, nationality, climate, soil, and other
circumstances? Man is subject to the same laws as plants and animals.....
An unprejudiced study of nature and the world, based upon innumerable facts, shows that
the actions of individuals and of men in general are determined by physical necessities
which restrict free will within the narrowest limits. Hence it has been concluded that the
partisans of this doctrine denied the discernment of crime and that they desired the
acquittal of every criminal, by which the state and society would be thrown into a state
of anarchy. We shall presently return to the last reproach which has, by the way,
thousands of times been made to natural science; as to the first, it is too absurd to
deserve any refutation. No scientific system has rendered the necessity of social and
political order more evident than that to which natural science owes its progress, nor has
any modem naturalist denied to the state the right of legitimate defense against attacks
on the well-being of society. What is true is that the partisans of these modern ideas
hold different opinions as regards crime and would banish that cowardly and irreconcilable
hatred which the state and society have hitherto cherished with so much hypocrisy as
regards the malefactor. Penetrated by such ideas, we cannot help a feeling of
commiseration for the offender, whilst we not the less abhor every action calculated to
disturb society; a humane sentiment, which gives the preference to preventive measures
over punishment...
Concluding Observations
We must finally be permitted to leave all questions about morality and utility out of
sight. The chief and indeed the sole object which concerned us in these researches is
truth. Nature exists neither for religion, for morality, nor for human beings; but it
exists for itself. What else can we do but take it as it is? Would it not be ridiculous in
us to cry like little children because our bread is not sufficiently buttered?
Source:
From: Ludwig Büchner, Force and Matter: Empirico-Philosophical Studies Intelligibly
Rendered, trans. J. F. Collingwood, (London, 1870), passim.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton.
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