e hollowest and
most absurd notions, a mere delirium. In order to arrive at it one is
obliged to consider the relative absence of motion in the case of a
body lying on the ground, as absolute rest, and then to transfer this
idea to the entire universe. This is made easier by the reduction of
motion in general to mere mechanical force. By the limitation of
motion to mere mechanical force we can conceive of a force as at rest,
as confined, as momentarily ineffective. If for example in the
transference of motion which transference is very frequently a
somewhat complicated process in the carrying out of which various
intermediate steps are necessary, one may stay the actual transference
at a chosen point and stop the process, as for example if one loads a
gun and delays the moment when the charge shall be set at liberty by
the pull of the trigger, through the firing of powder. Therefore one
may conceive of matter as being loaded with force in the unprogressive
static period, and this Herr Duehring appears to mean by his unity of
matter and force if indeed he means anything at all. This notion is
absurd, since it pictures as absolute for the entire universe a
condition which is by nature only relative and to which therefore only
a portion of matter can be subjected at one and the same time. Let us
look at it from this point of view and we do not escape the difficulty
of explaining first how the universe came to be loaded and in the
second place, whose finger drew the trigger. We may revolve all we
please but under the guidance of Herr Duehring we always come back
over and over again to the finger of God.

From astronomy our realist philosopher passes on to mechanics and
physics and complains that the mechanical theory of heat has brought
us no further in the course of a generation than the point which
Robert Mayer reached by his own efforts. Moreover the whole thing is
very obscure. We must "always remember that with conditions of the
movement of matter statical conditions are also given and that these
last are not measured in mechanical work. If we have earlier typified
nature as a great workwoman, and we still hold to the statement, we
must now add that the static condition, the condition of rest, does
not imply any mechanical labor. We are again without the bridge from
the static to the dynamic and if latent heat, so called, is up to the
present a stumbling block to the theory we can recognise a lack which
may be denied