Part 7 (2/2)

These fundamental properties are then the properties of the cell _machine_ just as surely as printing is the property of the printing press. We can no more account for the life phenomena by chemical powers than we can for printing by chemical forces manifested in the burning of the coal in the engine room. To be sure, it is the chemical forces in the engine room that furnishes the energy, but it is the machinery of the press that explains the printing. So, while chemical forces supply life energy, it is the cell machinery that must explain the fundamental living factors. So long as this machine is intact it can continue to run and perform its duties. But it is a very delicate machine and is easily broken. When it is broken its activities cease. A broken machine can not run. It is dead. In short, we come back once more to the idea of the machinery of protoplasm, and must base our understanding of its properties upon its structure.

It is proper to state that there are still some biologists who insist that the ultimate explanation of protoplasm is purely chemical and that life phenomena may be manifested in mixtures of compounds that are purely physical mixtures and not machines. It is claimed that much of this cell structure described above is due to imperfection in microscopic methods and does not really exist in living protoplasm, while the marvellous activities described are found only in the highly organized cell, but do not belong to simple protoplasm. It is claimed that simple protoplasm consists of a physical mixture of two different compounds which form a foam when thus mixed, and that much of the described structure of protoplasm is only the appearance of this foam.

This conception is certainly not the prevalent one to-day; and even if it should be the proper one, it would still leave the cell as an extremely complicated machine. Under any view the cell is a mechanism and must be resolved into subordinate parts. It may be uncertain whether these subordinate parts are to be regarded simply as chemical compounds physically mixed, or as smaller units each of which is a smaller mechanism. At all events, at the present time we know of no such simple protoplasm capable of living activities apart from machinery, and the problem of explaining life, even in the simplest form known, remains the problem of explaining a mechanism.

==The Origin of the Cell Machine.==--We have thus set before us another problem, which is after all the fundamental one, namely, to ask whether we can tell anything of nature's method of building the protoplasmic machine. The building of the higher animal and plant, as we have seen, is the result of the powers of protoplasm; but protoplasm itself is a machine. What has been its history?

We must first notice that no notion of _chemical evolution_ helps us out. It has been a favourite thought with some that the origin of the first living thing was the result of chemical evolution. As the result of physical forces there was produced, from the original nebulous ma.s.s, a more and more complicated system until the world was formed. Then chemical phenomena became more and more complicated until, with the production of more and more complicated compounds, protoplasm was finally produced. A few years ago, under the impulse of the idea that protoplasm was a compound, or at least a simple mixture of compounds, this thought of protoplasm as the result of chemical evolution was quite significant. _Physical forces_, _chemical forces_, and _vital forces_, explain successively the origin of _worlds_, _protoplasm_, and _organisms_. This conception has, however, no longer much significance.

We know of no such living chemical compound apart from cell machinery. A new conception of protoplasm has arisen which demands a different explanation of its origin. Since it is a machine rather than a compound, mechanical rather than chemical forces are required for its explanation.

Have we then any suggestion as to the method of the origin of this protoplasmic machine? Our answer must, at the present, be certainly in the negative. The complexity of the cell tells us plainly that it can not be the ultimate living substance which may have arisen from chemical evolution. It is made up of parts delicately adapted to act in harmony with each other, and its activity depends upon the relation of these parts. Whatever chemical forces may have accomplished, they never could have combined different bodies into linin, centrosomes, chromosomes, etc., which, as we have seen, are the basis of cell life. To account for this machine, therefore, we are driven to a.s.sume either that it was produced by some unknown intelligent power in its present condition of complex adjustment, or to a.s.sume that it has had a long history of building by successive steps, just as we have seen to be the case with the higher organisms. The latter a.s.sumption is, of course, in harmony with the general trend of thought. To-day protoplasm is produced only from other protoplasm; but, plainly, the first protoplasm on the earth must have had a different origin. We must therefore next look for facts which will enable us to understand its origin. We have seen that the animal and plant machines have been built up from the simple cell as the result of its powers acting under the ordinary conditions of nature.

Now, in accordance with this general line of thought, we shall be compelled to a.s.sume that previous to the period of building machinery which we have been considering, there was another period of machine building during which this cell machine was built by certain natural forces.

But here we are forced to stop, for nothing which we yet know gives even a hint as to the method by which this machine was produced. We have, however, seen that there are forces in nature efficient in building machines, as well as those for producing chemical compounds; and this, doubtless, suggests to us that there may be similar forces at work in building protoplasm. If we can find natural forces by which the simplest bit of living matter can be built up into a complicated machine like the ox, with its many delicately adjusted parts, it is certainly natural to imagine that the same forces may have built this simpler machine with which we started. But such a conclusion is for a simple reason impossible. We have seen that the essential factor in this machine building is reproduction, with the correlated powers of variation and heredity. Without these forces we could not have advanced in this machine building at all. But these properties are themselves the result of the machinery of protoplasm. We have no reason for thinking that this property of reproduction can occur in any other object in nature except this protoplasmic machine. Of course, then, if reproduction is the result of the structure of protoplasm we can not use this factor in explaining the origin of this protoplasm. The powers of the completed machine can not be brought forward to account for its origin. Thus the one fundamental factor for machine building is lacking, and if we are to explain nature's method of producing protoplasm from simpler structures, we must either suppose that the _parts_ of the cell are capable of reproduction and subject to heredity, or we must look for some other method. Such a road has however not yet been found, nor have we any idea in what direction to look. But the fact that nature has methods of machine building, as we have seen, may hold out the possibility that some day we may discover her method of building this primitive living machine, the cell.

It is useless to try to go further at present. The origin of living matter is shrouded in as great obscurity as ever. We must admit that the disclosures of the modern microscope have complicated rather than simplified this problem. While a few years ago chemists and biologists were eagerly expecting to discover a method of manufacturing a bit of living matter by artificial means, that hope has now been practically abandoned. The task is apparently hopeless. We can manipulate chemical forces and produce an endless series of chemical compounds. But we can not manipulate the minute bits of matter which make up the living machine. Since living matter is made of the adjustment of these microscopic parts of matter, we can not hope to make a bit of living matter until we find some way of making these little parts and adjusting them together. Most students of protoplasm have therefore abandoned all expectation of making even the simplest living thing. We are apparently as far from the real goal of a natural explanation of life as we were before the discovery of protoplasm.

==General Summary.==--It is now desirable to close this discussion of seemingly somewhat unconnected topics by bringing them together in a brief summary. This will enable us to see more clearly the position in which science stands to-day upon this matter of the natural explanation of living phenomena, and to picture to ourselves more concisely our knowledge of the living machine.

The problem we have set before us is to find out to what extent it is possible to account for vital phenomena by the application of ordinary natural laws and forces, and therefore to find out whether it is necessary to a.s.sume that there are forces needed to explain life which are different from those found in other realms of nature, or whether vital forces are all correlated with physical forces. It has been evident at a glance that the living body is a machine. Like other machines it consists of parts adjusted to each other for the accomplishment of definite ends, and its action depends upon the adjustment of its parts. Like other machines, it neither creates nor destroys energy, but simply converts the potential energy of its foods into some form of active energy, and, like other machines, its power ceases when the machine is broken.

With this understanding the problem clearly resolved itself into two separate ones. The first was to determine to what extent known physical and chemical laws and forces are adequate to an explanation of the various phenomena of life. The second was to determine whether there are any known forces which can furnish a natural explanation of the origin of the living machine. Manifestly, if the first of these problems is insolvable, the second is insolvable also.

In the study of the first problem we have reached the general conclusion that the secondary phenomena of life are readily explained by the application of physical and chemical forces acting in the living machine. These secondary phenomena include such processes as the digestion and absorption of food, circulation, respiration, excretion, bodily motion, etc. Nervous phenomena also doubtless come under this head, at least so far as concerns nervous force. We have been obliged, however, to exclude from this correlation the mental phenomena. Mental phenomena can not as yet be measured, and have not yet been shown to be correlated with physical energy. In other words, it has not yet been proved that mental force is energy at all; and if it is not energy, then of course it can not be included in the laws which govern the physical energy of the universe. Although a close relation exists between physical changes in the brain cells and mental phenomena, no further connection has yet been drawn between mental power and physical force.

All other secondary phenomena, however, are intelligently explained by the action of natural forces in the machinery of the living organism.

While we have thus found that the secondary phenomena of life are intelligible as the result of the structure of the machine, certain other fundamental phenomena have been constantly forcing themselves upon our attention as a _foundation_ of these secondary activities. The power of contraction, the power of causing certain kinds of chemical change to occur which result in metabolism, the property of sensibility, the property of reproduction--these are fundamental to all living activity, and are, after all, the real phenomena which we wish to explain. But these are not peculiar to the complicated machines. We can discard all the apparent machinery of the animal or plant and find these properties still developed in the simplest bit of living matter. To learn their significance, therefore, we have turned to the study of the simplest form of matter in which these fundamental properties are manifested.

This led us at once to the study of the so-called protoplasm, for protoplasm is the simplest known form of matter that is alive.

Protoplasm itself at first seemed to be a h.o.m.ogeneous body, and was looked upon as a chemical compound of high complexity. If this were true its properties would depend upon its composition and would be explained by the action of chemical forces. Such a conception would have quickly solved the problem, for it would reduce living properties to chemical powers. But the conception proved to be delusive. Protoplasm, at least the simplest form known to possess the fundamental life properties, soon showed itself to be no chemical compound, but a machine of wonderful intricacy.

The fundamental phenomena of life and of protoplasm have proved to be both chemical and mechanical. Metabolism is the result of the oxidation of food, and motion is an instance of transference of force. Our problem then resolved itself into finding the power that guides the action of these natural forces. Food will not undergo such an oxidation except in the presence of protoplasm, nor will the phenomena of metabolism occur except in the presence of _living_ protoplasm. Clearly, then, the living protoplasm contains within itself the power of guiding this play of chemical force in such a way as to give rise to vital phenomena, and our search must be not for chemical force but for this guiding principle.

Our study of protoplasm has told us clearly enough that we must find this guiding principle in the interaction of the machinery within the protoplasm. The microscope has told us plainly that these fundamental principles are based upon machinery. The cell division (reproduction) is apparently controlled by the centrosomes; the heredity by the chromosomes; the constructive metabolism by the nucleus in general, while the destructive metabolism is also seated in the cell substance outside the nucleus. Whether these statements are strictly accurate in detail does not particularly affect the general conclusion. It is clearly enough demonstrated that the activities of the protoplasmic body are dependent upon the relation of its different parts. Although we have got rid of the complicated machinery of the organism in general, we are still confronted with the machinery of the cell.

But our a.n.a.lysis can not, at present, go further. Our knowledge of this machine has not as yet enabled us to gain any insight as to its method of action. We can not yet conceive how this machine controls the chemical and physical forces at its disposal in such a way as to produce the orderly result of life. The strict correlation between the forces of the physical universe and those manifested by this protoplasm tells us that a transformation of energy occurs within it, but of the method of that transformation we as yet know nothing. Irritability, movement, metabolism, and reproduction appear to be not chemical properties of a compound, but mechanical properties of a machine. Our mechanical a.n.a.lysis of the living machine stops short before it reaches any foundation in the chemical forces of nature.

It is thus clearly apparent that the phenomena of life are dependent upon the machinery of living things, and we have therefore the second question of the _origin_ of this machinery to answer. Chemical forces and mechanical forces have been laboriously investigated, but neither appear adequate to the manufacture of machines. They produce only chemical compounds and worlds with their mountains and seas. The construction of artificial machines has demanded intelligence. But here is a natural machine--the organism. It is the only machine produced by natural methods, so far as we know; and we have therefore next asked whether there are, in nature, simple forces competent to build machines such as living animals and plants?

In pursuance of this question we have found that the complicated machines have been built out of the simpler ones by the action of known forces and laws. The factors in this machine building are simply those of the fundamental vital properties of the simplest protoplasmic machine. Reproduction, heredity, and variation, acting under the ever-changing conditions of the earth's surface, are apparently all that are needed to explain the building of the complex machines out of the simpler ones. Nature _has_ forces adequate to the building of machines as well as forces adequate to the formation of chemical compounds and worlds.

But here again we are unable to base our explanation upon chemical and physical forces. Reproduction, heredity, and variation are properties of the cell machine, and we are therefore thrown back upon the necessity of explaining the origin of this machine. Can we find a mechanical or chemical explanation of the origin of protoplasm? A chemical explanation of the cell is impossible, since it is not a chemical compound, but a piece of mechanism. The explanation given for the origin of animals and plants is also here apparently impossible. The factors upon which that explanation depended are factors of this completed machine itself, and can not be used to explain its origin. We are left at present therefore without any foundation for further advance. The cells must have had a history of construction, but we do not as yet conceive any forces which may be looked upon as contributing to that history. Whether life phenomena can be manifested by any mixture of compounds simpler than the cell we do not yet know.

The great problems still remaining for solution, which have hardly been touched by modern biology in all its endeavours to find a mechanical explanation of the living machine, are, therefore, three. First, the relation of mentality to the general phenomena of the correlation of force; second, the intelligible understanding of the mechanism of protoplasm which enables it to guide the blind chemical and physical forces of nature so as to produce definite results; third, the kind of forces which may have contributed to the origin of that simplest living machine upon whose activities all vital phenomena rest--the living cell.

THE END.

==THE LIBRARY OF USEFUL STORIES.==

The Story of a Grain of Wheat. By W.C. EDGAR.

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