Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/89

 body to another, one may as far as it is regarded as transferring itself, as active, consider it as the original cause of motion, but so far as it is transferred, as passive. This active motion we call force; the passive, expression of force. It is therefore just as clear as noon that force is just as great as its expression because the same motion fulfils itself in both.

A motionless condition of matter is therefore one of the 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 some what 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