here was a differentiation from matter. Thus we
are obliged to be satisfied with these mystical phrases and with the
assurance that the self contained original state was neither static
nor dynamic, neither in a state of rest nor of motion. We are still
without information with regard to the whereabouts of mechanical force
at that period and how we arrived at a condition of motion from one of
rest without a push from the outside, that is without God.

Before the time of Herr Duehring materialists were wont to speak of
matter and motion. He reduces motion to mechanical force as its
necessary original form and so renders incomprehensible the real
connection between matter and motion which was also not evident to the
earlier materialists. Yet the thing is easy enough. Matter has never
existed without motion, neither can it. Motion in space, the
mechanical motion of smaller particles to single worlds, the motion of
molecules as in the case of heat, or as electric or magnetic currents,
chemical analysis or synthesis, organic life, each single atom of the
matter of the world--they all discover themselves in one or other of
the forms of motion or in several of them together at any given
moment. All quiescence, all rest, is only significant in relation to
this or that given form of motion. A body for example may be upon the
ground in mechanical quiescence, in mechanical rest. This does not
prevent its participation in the movements of the earth and of the
whole solar system, just as little does it prevent its smallest
component parts from completing the movements conditioned by the
temperature or its atoms from going through a chemical process. Matter
without motion is just as unthinkable as motion without matter. Motion
is just as uncreatable or indestructible as matter itself, the older
philosophy of Descartes proclaimed precisely that the quantity of
motion in the world has been fixed from the beginning. Motion cannot
be generated therefore it can only be transferred. If motion is
transferred from one body to another, one may as far as it is
regarded as transferring itself, as active, consider it as the
original cause of motion, but so far as it is transferred, as passive.
This active motion we call force; the passive, expression of force. It
is therefore just as clear as noon that force is just as great as its
expression because the same motion fulfils itself in both.

A motionless condition of matter is therefore one of th