Force and matter; or, Principles of the natural order of the universe. With a system of morality based thereon

Preface to the Fifteenth Edition ix

Force and Matter ......... i

ImmortaHty of Matter 14

Form 67

The Heavens 104

Original Generation 129

The Fitness of Things in Nature (Teleology.) . . 172

Man 197

Thought 241

Consciousness 247

Concluding Observation 39^

Appendix 397

To the dialectician the world is an idea, to the bel esprit a picture, to the en* thusiast a dream, to the scientist alone it is a truth.— Orges.

The criterion of a true philosopher is that he is not a professor of philosophy. The plainest truths are those precisely upon which man hitslast of all.— Luowic Feurrbach.

Experience and observation must be our sole guides ; we meet with them in the case of physicians who have been philosophers, but not in the case of philosophers who have not been physicians.— Lamettrie.

We must have facts and a positive philosophy, based upon nature and reason.-*

H. TUTTLE.

And if the inscription on the ancient pyramid of Sais says, " I am all that is, that was, and that will be ; no mortal man has yet raised my veil," it might be replied thereto : " Modern science has removed the veil and has discovered that Force and Matter were, are, and will be.— F. J. Pisko.

The number of errors is unlimited, truth alone is but one.— Ph. Spiller.

It nettles men to find that truth should be so simple.— Goethb.

Preface to the First Edition.*

Now what I want is — facts. — Boz.

THE following pages do not claim to form a system, or an aggregate exhaustive treatise. They are scattered thoughts and ideas, collated from the almost boundless province of the empirical study of natural philosophy, yet essentially connected with, and mutually completing, each other. A merciful judgment at the hands of my confreres is claimed for them on account of the difficulty to which an individual is necessarily subject in grappling with the innumerable mass of materials spread over the vast fields of natural science. If these pages may venture to claim any merit or characteristic, it is that of representing a determination not to shrink with dismal horror from the simple and unavoidable consequences of an unprejudiced contemplation of nature from the standpoint of empirical philosophy, but to admit of the truth regardless of what may follow. We cannot make things different from what they are, and nothing seems to us more preposterous than the attempts of some distinguished naturalists at introducing orthodoxy into natural science. We do not pretend to bring forward anything absolutely new or anything that has never been heard of before. Similar views and views cognate to ours have been taught in all ages, and some of them were laid down by the oldest Greek and Indian philosophers ; but their groundwork, which is

* Written at Tubingen in the year 1855.

VI PREFACE.

necessarily empirical, could only be supplied by the progress of natural science in the present century. It is therefore obvious that these views, in their present clearness and consistency, are essentially a trophy of modern times and closely connected with the new and gigantic achievements of empirical science. Indeed, scholastic philosophy, ever riding the high, though from day to day more and more emaciated horse, lays the flattering unction to its soul that these views have long been disposed of, and would fain consign them to the limbo of oblivion, with which object it has labelled them " Materialism," "Sensationalism," " Determinism," and so on ; nay, the gentlemen of that school go so far, in their assumed supercilious superiority, as to talk of having given them " the historical quietus." But they themselves are going down day by day in the public estimation, and losing ground in their speculative hollowness before the rapid rise of the empirical sciences, which are making it daily more evident that both the macrocosmic and microcosmic worlds obey at every stage of their genesis, existence and subsidence, the mechayiical laws which lie in the very nature of things. Starting from the recognition of the indissoUuble relation that exists between force and matter as an indestructible basis, the view of nature resting upon empirical philosophy must result in definitely relegating every form of supernaturalism or idealism from what may be called the hermeneutics of natural facts, and in looking upon these facts as wholly independent of the influence of any external power dissociated from matter. There seems to us to be no doubt about the ultimate victory of this realistic philosophy over its antagonists. The strength of its proofs lies xn facts, and not in untelligible and meaningless phrases. For in the long run there is no contending against facts; it is useless to " kick against the pricks." It need scarcely be said that our exposition has no connection with the idle fancies of the older school of natural philosophy. These curious attempts at constructing nature by thought

PREFACE. VII

instead of by observation, have so completely failed and have brought their advocates into such public discredit, that the very name of ' ' philosopher of nature ' ' is all but generally used at this day as the reverse of a flattering epithet. It is obvious that this reproach can only be levelled at a certain tendency or school, and not at natural philosophy in itself; and there is now an almost general consensus of opinions that natural science must be the basis of every philosophy that lays claim to exactitude. " Nature and experience " is the watchword of the age. The failure of previous attempts of natural philosophers serves as the clearest proof of the fact that the universe is not the realization of a uniform creative thought, but a complex of things and facts, which we must take for what it is, and not for what we may be pleased to fancy it. ' ' We must accept things as they really are, ' ' says Virchow, ' ' not as we choose to imagine them." We shall seek to present our views in a generally intelligible form and to base them on known or easily comprehensible facts, and in doing so shall avoid all those philosophical technicalities the use or rather abuse of which has justly brought all theoretical, and especially German, philosophy into discredit in the eyes both of the learned and unlearned. It is part of the very natzire of philosophy to be intellectually the joint property of all. Philosophical disquisitions which cannot be understood by every educated man, are not, in our opinion, worth the printer's ink that is spent on them. What is thought clearly, can be expressed clearly and without circumlocution.* The philosophical mist which enshrouds the writings of learned men, seems rather intended to hide than to reveal thoughts. The days of learned tall-talk, of philosophical charlatanism, and of * ' intellectual legerdemain, ' ' as Cotta strikingly expresses

*"Men who belong neither to the highest nor to the lowest intellectual spheres," admirably says the famous English physicist Tyndall, " often infer want of depth from perfect clearness. They find comfort and support in abstract and learned phraseology."

VIII PREFACE.

it, are over by this time, or ought to be. May our German philosophy come to recognize that words are not deeds, and that, those who wish to be understood ought to speak an intelHgible language.

We shall meet with no lack of opponents, and of the bitterest, too. But we shall take no notice of any but those who meet us on the ground of facts and of empiricism. Let the speculative gentry go on fighting one another from standpoints that are their own creation, but let them not run away with the strange notion that they possess the monopoly of philosophic truth. ' ' Speculation," says Ludwig Feuerbach, "is philosophy intoxicated. When philosophy shall have become sober again, it will be to the mind what pure spring-water is to the body."