e in order to fix it relatively to all one's scientific
hypotheses. Next in importance come all the actual acquisitions of
mathematics as well as the leading principles of exact science in
mechanics, physics and chemistry and particularly the scientific
results in physiology, zoology, and antiquarian investigation."

Herr Duehring speaks in this confident and decided fashion with
respect to the mathematical and scientific scholarship of Herr
Duehring. One cannot detect in its meager shape and in its scanty and
audacious results the extent of positive knowledge which lies behind.
Every time the oracle is consulted for a definite statement as regards
physics or chemistry we get nothing as regards physics but the
equation which expresses the mechanical equivalent of heat, and
concerning chemistry only this that all bodies are divisible into
elements and combinations of elements. He who can speak as Duehring
does about "gravitating atoms" shows at once that he is quite at a
loss to understand the difference between an atom and a molecule.
Atoms, of course, exist, not with respect to gravitation or any other
physical or mechanical form of motion, but only as concerns chemical
action. And if the last chapter on organic nature is read, the empty,
self-contradictory, assertive, oracular, stupid, circuitous absolute
nothingness of the final result lead one to the conclusion that Herr
Duehring talks about things of which he knows very little and this
conclusion becomes a certainty when we come to his proposal in the
course of his writing on organic life (biology) to use the term
"composition" instead of evolution. He who can make such a suggestion
as that gives evidence that he is not acquainted with the building up
of organic bodies.

All organic bodies, the very lowest excepted, develop from small cells
by the increment of visible pieces of albumen with a central cell. The
cell generally develops an outer skin and the contents are more or
less fluid. The lowest cell-bodies develop from one cell; the enormous
majority of organic beings are many-celled and among the lower forms
these take on similar, and among the higher forms greater variations
of, groupings and activities. In the human body for example are bones,
muscles, nerves, sinews, ligaments, cartilage, skin, all either made
up of cells or originating in them. But for all organic bodies, from
the amoeba which is a simple and for the most part unprotected piece
of albume