solid crust of the earth, like the water of
the ocean, represents in its present form a certain quantity of heat
set free which implies the same quantity of mechanical force. By the
passing of the vaporous state which was the original form of the earth
into the fluid state and later into a condition, for the most part
solid, a certain quantity of molecular energy was set free in space,
the difficulty of which Herr Duehring whispers does not therefore
exist. We are frequently brought to a stop in our cosmic observations
by lack of knowledge, but nowhere by insuperable theoretical
difficulties. The bridge from statics to dynamics is therefore the
push from the outside caused by the cooling or heating occasioned by
other bodies which influence certain objects in equipoise. The
further we explore Herr Duehring's philosophy, the more impossible
appear all his attempts to explain rotation from absence of rotation,
or to discover the bridge by which that which is purely static,
self-contained, can without disturbance come to be the dynamic, in
motion.

We should here be glad to get rid of the whole self-contained
condition business. Herr Duehring, however, goes to chemistry and
gives us three permanent natural laws established by the philosophy of
realism as follows, 1. The constant amount of matter in the universe.
2. The simple chemical elements, and 3. The mechanical forces are
unchangeable.

Therefore the impossibility of creating or destroying matter, the
simple forms of its existence as far as they exist, and motion, these
old, well known facts, inadequately expressed, that is the only
positive thing which Herr Duehring is in a position to offer us as a
result of his real philosophy of the inorganic world. All these things
we have long known. But what we have not known is that they are
permanent laws and as such natural properties of the system of things.
It is just the same thing over again as in the case of Kant. Herr
Duehring takes some universally known expressions, pastes the Duehring
label on them and calls them "fundamentally original results and
views, system shaping thoughts, profound science."

We have not long to hesitate on this account. Whatever deficiencies
the most profound science and the best contrived social theories may
have, for once Herr Duehring can say precisely "The quantity of gold
in the universe must always remain the same and cannot be increased or
diminished any more than matter in genera