Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/86

 they have lost them." But if people get angry and say that this is all vague and formless, a mere fanciful idea, incapable of being made definite and a very poor notion, such views would not carry us a step further, scientifically. Such insults and exaggerations are sufficiently numerous. What is there to hinder Herr Duehring him self from discovering the mechanical system of the original nebular state?

Fortunately we are informed that the nebular hypothesis of Kant "is far from showing a fully distinct condition of the world-medium or of explaining how matter arrived at a similar state." This is really very fortunate for Kant who is to be congratulated on having been able to trace the existing celestial bodies to the nebular condition, and who yet does not allow himself to dream of the self-contained unchanged condition of matter. It is to be remarked by the way that although the nebular condition of Kant is supposed to be the original vapor-form of matter, this is to be understood merely relatively. It is to be understood on the one hand as the original vapor form of the heavenly bodies, as they are at present, and on the other hand as the earliest form of matter to which we have been able to trace our way backwards. The fact that matter passed through an endless series of other forms before arriving at the nebular state is not excluded from this conception but is on the other hand rather included in it.

Herr Duehring is at an advantage here. Whereas science comes to a halt at the existence of the nebulous state his quack science carries him back to that "Condition of the development of the world which cannot be called actually static in the present sense of the word but most emphatically cannot be called dynamic. The unity of matter and mechanical force which we call the