Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
each being decomposed over and again, such does the philosophical,
heartless intellect of the school resolve Everything into the perfect Noth-
ing by criticism […] even believing that the immortality of the soul
would have been disproved.
36
Without going over Liebig's elemental analysis, there was of course also
a direct way to link chemistry with nihilism, because what writers
usually meant by nihilism was nothing else than materialism (including
atheism) or some sort of sensualism, as in Turgenev's novel. To end this
section with another French example, Alexandre Dumas père (1802-70)
showed us how 'chemical nihilism' consequently, but not without trage-
dy, leads to self-destruction and death. The story is told in the “Epilogue”
to his play
Le Comte Hermann
(1849),
37
which in English is also known
separately under the title
Dr. Sturler's Experiment
. This Dr. Sturler is a
German chemist-physician, once more at the University of Heidelberg in
1840, who is weary of his life because his scientific endeavors have
turned out to be unsuccessful. His last experiment, “for the betterment of
science”, is actually carried out on two different levels. On the profane
level, he takes a well-known deadly poison and then carefully records
every change of his body, while he has his latest chemical invention, the
antidote, up his sleeve for the second phase of the experiment. On the
spiritual level, the experiment is designed to test the depth of his nihilism
by the strength of his wish to die, since Dr. Sturler believes neither in
moral improvement nor in any religious idea. Instead, “I believe in
nothing […] To nothingness from which I came - to nothingness, I am
going to return.” If he takes the antidote in time, the profane experiment
will be completed for the benefit of humanity, whereas the spiritual ex-
periment would yield the weakness of his nihilism, to the detriment of
scientific materialism. Constructed as the plot is, Dumas did not hesitate
to employ contradictions by letting Dr. Sturler argue for atheism (deny-
36
“Oleander las in einer Schrift der neuen philosophischen Schule, der kritischen oder
chemischen, wie er sie nannte. 'Chemisch' deshalb, sagte er zu Siegbert, weil diese
Philosophen des absoluten Nichts die Liebigs der unsichtbaren Welt sind. Wie die
chemische Retorte Urstoff auf Urstoff entdeckt und diesen immer wieder aufs Neue
zerlegt, so hat der philosophische, gemüthlose Verstand der neuesten Schule Alles
durch die Kritik bis zum vollkommensten Nichts aufgelöst und […] nun auch glaubt,
die Unsterblichkeit der Seele selbst widerlegt zu haben.”
37
First published Paris: Marchant, 1949.
