Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/128

 can be made liquid by pressure when the pressure approaches the point where liquefaction sets in. Boyles law therefore is shown only to be true within specific bounds. But is it absolute, a final truth of last instance within specific bounds? No physicist would say so. He would say that it is correct for certain gases and within certain limits of pressure and temperature, and even then within these somewhat narrow limits he would not exclude the possibility of a still narrower limitation or change in application as the result of further investigation. This is how final truths of last instance stand in physics, for example. Really scientific works as a rule avoid such dogmatic expressions as truth and error, but they are constantly cropping up in works like the Philosophy of Reality, where mere loose talking vaunts itself the supreme result of sovereign thought.

But a naïve reader may say, "Where has Herr Duehring expressly stated that the content of his philosophy of reality is final truth of the last instance?" Well, for example, in his dithyramb on his system which we quoted above, and again where he says "Moral truths as far as they are known are as sound as those of mathematics." Does not Herr Duehring explain that by reason of his powers of criticism and searching investigations, the fundamental philosophy has been brought to light and that he has thus bestowed upon us final truths of last instance? But if Herr Duehring does not set up such a claim either on his own behalf or that of his time, if he says that some time in the misty future final truths of last instance will be established, and that therefore his own statements are merely accidental and confused, a kind of "mole-like scepticism" and "barren confusion," what is all the fuss about, and what useful purpose is served by Herr Duehring?