So that whoever wants to raise difficulties in the fundamental case now under consideration must take care that he does not allow himself to pass them by on less obvious occasions. Moreover, there exists the possibility of interposing successively graduated intermediate stages, and also a bridge of continuity by which it is possible to move backwards and reach the extinction of the process of change. It is true that from a purely conceptual standpoint this continuity does not help us pass the main difficulty, but to us it is the basic form of all regularity and of every known form of transition in general, so that we are entitled to use it also as a medium between that first equilibrium and the disturbance of it. But if we had conceived the so to speak" (!) "motionless equilibrium on the model of the ideas which are accepted without any particular objection" (!) "in our present-day mechanics, there would be no way of explaining how matter could have reached the process of change." Apart from the mechanics of masses there is, however, we are told, also a transformation of mass movement into the movement of extremely small particles, but as to how this takes place -- "for this up to the present we have no general principle at our disposal and consequently we should not be surprised if these processes take place somewhat in the dark" {79-80, 81}.
That is all Herr Dühring has to say. And in fact, we would have to see the acme of wisdom not only in the "self-mutilation of our generative power" {79}, but also in blind, implicit faith, if we allowed ourselves to be put off with these really pitiable rank subterfuges and circumlocutions.
Herr Dühring admits that absolute identity cannot of itself effect the transition to change. Nor is there any means whereby absolute equilibrium can of itself pass into motion. What is there, then? Three lame, false arguments.
Firstly: it is just as difficult to show the transition from each link, however small, in the chain of existence with which we are familiar, to the next one. -- Herr Dühring seems to think his readers are infants.
The establishment of individual transitions and connections between the tiniest links in the chain of existence is precisely the content of natural science, and when there is a hitch at some point in its work no one, not even Herr Dühring, thinks of explaining prior motion as having arisen out of nothing, but always only as a transfer, transformation or transmission of some previous motion. But here the issue is admittedly one of accepting motion as having arisen out of immobility, that is, out of nothing.
In the second place, we have the "bridge of continuity". From a purely conceptual standpoint, this, to be sure, does not help us over the difficulty, but all the same we are entitled to use it as a medium between immobility and motion. Unfortunately the continuity of immobility consists in not moving; how therefore it is to produce motion remains more mysterious than ever. And however infinitely small the parts into which Herr Dühring minces his transition from complete non-motion to universal motion, and however long the duration he assigns to it, we have not got a ten-thousandth part of a millimetre further. Without an act of creation we can never get from nothing to something, even if the something were as small as a mathematical differential. The bridge of continuity is therefore not even an asses' bridge [37a] ;it is passable only for Herr Dühring.
Thirdly: so long as present-day mechanics holds good -- and this science, according to Herr Dühring, is one of the most essential levers for the formation of thought -- it cannot be explained at all how it is possible to pass from immobility to motion. But the mechanical theory of heat shows us that the movement of masses under certain conditions changes into molecular movement (although here too one motion originates from another motion, but never from immobility); and this, Herr Dühring shyly suggests, may possibly furnish a bridge between the strictly static (in equilibrium)and dynamic (in motion). But these processes take place "somewhat in the dark". And it is in the dark that Herr Dühring leaves us sitting.
This is the point we have reached with all his deepening and sharpening -- that we have perpetually gone deeper into ever sharper nonsense, and finally land up where of necessity we had to land up -- "in the dark".
But this does not abash Herr Dühring much. Right on the next page he has the effrontery to declare that he has "been able to provide a real content for the idea of self-equal stability directly from the behaviour of matter and the mechanical forces "{D. Ph. 82}.
And this man describes other people as "charlatans"!
Fortunately, in spite of all this helpless wandering and confusion "in the dark", we are left with one consolation, and this is certainly edifying to the soul:
"The mathematics of the inhabitants of other celestial bodies can rest on no other axioms than our own!" {69}.
VI.
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.
COSMOGONY, PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY P assing on, we come now to the theories concerning the manner in which the present world came into existence.
