So we get common descent after all, but only "second class". We must rejoice that after Herr Dühring has attributed so much to it that is evil and obscure, we nevertheless find it in the end readmitted by the backdoor.
It is the same with natural selection, for after all his moral indignation over the struggle for existence through which natural selection operates we suddenly read:
"The deeper basis of the constitution of organisms is thus to be sought in the conditions of life and cosmic relations, while the natural selection emphasised by Darwin can only come in as a secondary factor" {115}.
So we get natural selection after all, though only second class; and along with natural selection also the struggle for existence, and with that also the priestly Malthusian overpopulation! That is all, and for the rest Herr Dühring refers us to Lamarck.
In conclusion he warns us against the misuse of the terms: metamorphosis and development. Metamorphosis, he maintains, is! an unclear concept {112}, and the concept of development is permissible only in so far as laws of development can be really established {126}. In place of both these terms we should use the term "composition" {114}, and then everything would be all right. It is the same old story over again: things remain as they were, and Herr Dühring is quite satisfied as soon as we just alter the names.
When we speak of the development of the chicken in the egg we are creating confusion, for we are able to prove the laws of; development only in an incomplete way. But if we speak of its' "composition" everything becomes clear. We shall therefore no longer say: This child is developing finely but: It is composing) itself magnificently. We can congratulate Herr Dühring on being a worthy peer of the author of the Nibelungenring not only in his noble self-esteem but also in his capacity of composer of the future. [42]
VIII.
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.
THE ORGANIC WORLD
(Conclusion) "P onder ... what positive knowledge is required to equip our section on natural philosophy with all its scientific premises.
Its basis is provided firstly by all the fundamental achievements of mathematics, and then the principal propositions established by exact science in mechanics, physics and chemistry, as well as the general conclusions of natural science in physiology, zoology and similar branches of inquiry" {D. Ph. 517}.
Such is the confidence and assurance with which Herr Dühring speaks of the mathematical and naturalistic erudition of Herr Dühring. It is impossible to detect from the meagre section concerned, and still less from its even more paltry conclusions, what deep-rooted positive knowledge lies behind them. In any case, in order to create the Dühring oracle on physics and chemistry, it is not necessary to know any more of physics than the equation which expresses the mechanical equivalent of heat, or any more of chemistry than that all bodies can be divided into elements and combinations of elements. Moreover, a person who can talk of "gravitating atoms" {81}, as Herr Dühring does (p. 131) {D. Ph.}, only proves that he is completely "in the dark" as to the difference between atoms and molecules.
As is well known, it is only chemical action, and not gravitation or other mechanical or physical forms of motion, that is explained by atoms. And if anyone should read as far as the chapter on organic nature, with its vacuous, self-contradictory and, at the decisive point, oracularly senseless meandering verbiage, and its absolutely futile final conclusion, he will not be able to avoid forming the opinion, from the very start, that Herr Dühring is here speaking of things of which he knows remarkably little.
This opinion becomes absolute certainty when the reader reaches his suggestion that in the science of organic beings (biology) the term composition should be used instead of development {114}. The person who can put forward such a suggestion shows that he has not the faintest suspicion of the formation of organic bodies.
