110 NietzscheBy about the middle of the century, an extremely stodgy form of
materialism had sapped the energy of German idealism. Breviaries of
sobriety suddenly attained the popularity of best-sellers. Notable among
these were Karl Vogt's Physiologische Briefe (Physiological Letters, 1845)
and his polemical pamphlet Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft (Simple Faith
and Science, 1854), Jakob Moleschott's Kreislauf des Lebens (Circulation
of Life, 1852), Ludwig Büchner's Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter, 1855),
and Heinrich Czolbe's Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus (New Portrayal of
Sensualism, 1855). Czolbe characterized the ethos of this materialism of
force, thrusting, and glandular function as follows: "It is proof of...
arrogance and vanity to wish to improve the world we know by invent-
ing a transcendental wodd and to lift man above nature by attributing to
man a supersensory aspect. Yes, of course—dissatisfaction with the
world of appearances, the deepest root of the supersensory oudook is
... moral weakness Be content with the wodd as it is" (Lange 2,557).
But what was this "as it is" to a mentality of this sort! The wodd of
becoming and being was nothing but the flurry of bits of matter and the
transformation of energy. Nietzsche found himself challenged to
defend the world of the atomist Democritus against contemporary
materialists. Obviously, there was no further need for the nous of
Anaxagoras and the ideas of Plato and most certainly not the God of
the Christians, nor was there any useful application for the substance of
Spinoza, the cogfto of Descartes, the I of Fichte, or the mind of Hegel.
According to this logic, the human mind is nothing but a function of the
brain. Thoughts are to the brain as bile to the liver and urine to the kid-
neys. Hermann Lotze, one of the few survivors of the formedy strong
band of metaphysicians, called these ideas "somewhat unfiltered."
The triumphant advance of materialism could not be impeded by
clever objections, especially because it featured a metaphysical belief in
progress. If we analyze things and life down to their basic components,
we will, according to this belief, uncover the innermost secrets of
nature. If we can find out how things are made, we will be able to copy
them. This attitude seeks to get to the bottom of everything, even