Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/70

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LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

ing, a leap is made into being, and that existence is the result of this, that is a more complete and higher form of being, as with Herr Duehring. Being leads to quality, quality to quantity, just as with Herr Duehring. And in order that no essential shall be lacking Herr Duehring tells us elsewhere "from the realm of absence of sensation man leaps to that of sensation in spite of all the quantitative steps with but one qualitative leap … from which we can show that he is entirely differentiated from the mere gradation of one and the same quality." This is just the Hegelian standard of measurement according to which mere quantitative expansion or contraction causes a sudden qualitative change at a given point, as for example with heated or cooled water, there are points where the spring into a new set of conditions is fulfilled under normal circumstances, and where therefore quantity suddenly changes into quality.

Our investigation has likewise sought to penetrate to the deepest roots, and discovers the rooted Duehring foundations to be the "fever-phantasies" of a Hegel, the categories of the Hegelian logic, in the first place, teachings in regard to existence after the antique Hegelian method, and an ineffective cloak of plagiarism.

And not content with purloining the whole scheme of existence from his despised predecessors, Herr Duehring after giving the above example of a change of quantity into quality has the coolness to say of Marx, "Is it not comical, this appeal (of Marx) to Hegelian confusion and mistiness, that quantity changes into quality." Confused mixture, who changes his ground, who is a comical fellow Herr Duehring?

All these pretty little statements are not only not "axiomatic utterances" according to label, but are simply taken from foreign sources, that is, from Hegel's