Force and matter : empirico-philosophical studies, intelligibly rendered with introduction written for the English edition / by Louis Büchner ; edited by J. Frederick Collingwood.

  • Büchner, Ludwig, 1824-1899.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Force and matter : empirico-philosophical studies, intelligibly rendered with introduction written for the English edition / by Louis Büchner ; edited by J. Frederick Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    using the expressions ''ideal/' immaterial, etc., and calls us Saul among the prophets. Mr T. has, in spite of his philosophical education, not understood us. Let him point out a single passage in which we deny the idea. We merely deny its origin from any source but the sensual world—a theory, it is true, which partly removes the ground upon which our school philosophy rests. We have as little thought of sitting in judgment on the ideal or rational qualities of the human mind—and we are unable to conceive how we can be accused of denying the existence of mind—which, with its laws of operation, is as much a natural fact as any other in existence. Whether man be considered as a product of nature or of a creative power—whether the human mind be the product of material combinations or self-existent, is of little im- portance to the investigations of the qualities it possesses, and the laws to which this mind is subject. We have not, as Mr T. reproaches us, diligently avoided giving a notion of organism, but we have treated of it at length in the chapter Vital Force, which Mr T. has very likely passed over. It was there—as well as in the chapters Design and Primary Generation —shown, that the organic types did not, to explain them, require the assumption of a supernatural scheme, but that they are the products of a gradual, slow, and unconscious action of nature. Such a process seems, in the presence of the wonder- ful organic forms which surround us, miraculous to the uninitiated eye. But the eye of the investigator penetrates through countless periods backwards, and observes how one organic part has been slowly de- veloped from another. The reproach that we know philosophy only by hear- say does not hurt us, as we were prepared for it. It is