It was natural that the materialists would eagerly embrace these ideas. From the few words with which Büchner introduces his chapter about life-force, we obtain a clear insight into the opinions that are held on this subject in the world of natural science. “The mystic notions,” says Büchner, “that have confused the philosophy of science were invented by a time possessing but a slight knowledge of nature. To these notions, which have been thrown overboard by a later exact scientific research, belongs first of all the so-called life-force. Scarcely has there ever existed an hypothesis more detrimental to the cause of science than this singular organic force presented in contradistinction to the inorganic forces, gravity, affinity, light, electricity, magnetism, etc. If science were forced to acknowledge such an hypothesis, all we have said about the immutability of the natural laws and of the mechanical order of the universe would collapse, and we would be forced to admit that a higher hand interferes in the course of nature, dictating exceptional laws that defy all calculations. A break would be found in the natural structure of the world, science would despair, and all physical and psychical research cease. Fortunately science has not been obliged to yield to the irrational pressure of the dynamists, but, on the contrary, has won everywhere a splendid victory; it has lately gathered such a mass of self-evident facts to its support that life-force nowadays wanders an empty shadow along the boundaries of natural science. All those who have made a closer study of any of the branches of science that deal at all with the organic world, agree, almost to a man, in the condemnation of life-force, and the very word is so detested by science that it is always purposely avoided.” We may now let Büchner present the real, scientific evidence why life-force must be charged to the ignorance of a time when knowledge of nature was but slight. In this way the reader will perhaps obtain a more direct and at the same time an historic view of the materialistic mode of thinking. Above all, says Büchner, it is the province of chemistry to show that the elements of matter are everywhere the same in the inorganic as well as in the organic world, and that life substance is unable to present one single atom not found in inorganic nature and therefore not partaking in the general flux (_Stoffwechsel_) of matter. Chemistry has decomposed organic bodies into their elements exactly as it did before with the inorganic.