Part 9 (1/2)
If vital units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units, statical units, and morphological units, should fall into the same categories of judgment.
A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as ”_the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations_.” This definition, when first formulated, was received by all the materialists of Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely perfect. All the phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a nest of them, fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to show that any other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into this prodigious formula of Mr. Spencer. The London ”Times” tried its hand on it, but only in a playful way. It said: ”All the world, or at least all living things, are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number of little boxes, one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of all contains the germ,”--the elementary principle of life. But this was hardly a legitimate characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of ”continuous adjustment,” nor are the internal relations of one box adjusted to the external relations of another. The definition is really that of a piece of working machinery--any working machinery--and was designed to cover Mr.
Spencer's theory of ”molecular machinery” as run by molecular force.
But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of ”life,”
according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor Bastian's ”ephemoromorphs” that do not live half as long as one of these automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment of their internal to their external relations is continuous.
The success of Mr. Spencer's definition of ”life” encouraged Professor Bastian to try his hand at it, with this definitional result: ”Life,” he says, ”is an unstable collocation of Matter (with a big M), capable of growing by selection and interst.i.tial appropriation of new matter (what new matter?) which then a.s.sumes similar qualities, of continually varying in composition in response to variations of its Medium (another big M), and which is capable of self-multiplication by the separation of portions of its own substance.”
It shall not be our fault if the reader fails to understand this definition--to untwist this formidable formula of life. And we can best aid him by grammatically a.n.a.lyzing its structure. And,
1. ”Life is capable of growing.” We are glad to know this. As a vitalist it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the ”back seat” to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry. We let its ”unstable collocation” pa.s.s for what it is worth, and stick to our grammatical a.n.a.lysis.
2. ”Life grows--is capable of doing something.” This a.s.surance positively encourages us.
3. ”It grows by selection and interst.i.tial appropriation.” This is still more encouraging. It emboldens us to take a second step forward. Life, we feel, is increasing in potentiality.
4. ”By appropriation it enables _new matter to a.s.sume similar qualities to old matter_.” This makes us more confident than ever; we take another step forward--are half disposed to take two of them. Life is getting to be almost a ”potentiated potentiality,” to adopt the style of materialistic phrases.
5. ”It causes matter _to continually vary in composition._” Bravo! we unhesitatingly take two steps forward on the strength of this most comforting a.s.surance. Life is a.s.suredly getting the upperhand of Matter (with a big M.) It is no longer a mere ”undiscovered correlate of motion”--a hypothetical slave to matter only. It wrestles with it--throws it into the shade. We involuntarily take several more steps forward.
6. ”Life is capable of self-multiplication”--has almost a creative faculty. Here we interject a perfect bravura of ”bravoes,” and, stepping boldly up to the front, demand of Professor Bastian to ”throw up the sponge,” take a back seat, and there--formulate us a new definition of ”life.”
But our London University materialist is not entirely satisfied with his own definition, or at least with the moral effect of it. He thinks that all these attempts to define life as a non-ent.i.ty only, tend to keep up the demoralizing idea that it is an actual ent.i.ty. We entirely agree with him in this conclusion. The infelicity and entire inconclusiveness of the definition he has vouchsafed us can hardly have any other effect. He sees this himself, and hence this foot-note to his great work on Ephemeromorphs: ”Inasmuch as no life can exist without an organism, of which it is the phenomenal manifestation, so it seems comparatively useless to attempt to define this phenomenal manifestation alone--and, what is worse, such attempts tend to keep up the idea that life is an independent ent.i.ty.”
It may be objected that our grammatical a.n.a.lysis of the professor's definition of life is unfair, since he manifestly intended that it should cover a ”living thing,” and not ”life” as an abstract, term. Our reply to this is, that he makes no distinction between the two. Life, with him, is simply a phenomenal manifestation. The two are correlative terms; so that his definition of the one must necessarily be the definition of the other, either as an identical or partial judgment. But let us take his definition entirely out of its abstract sense, and run it into the concrete. The able pathological anatomist of the London University college is a ”living thing.” He is, therefore, presumably a phenomenal manifestation. He is capable of growing, by ”selection and interst.i.tial appropriation,” in reputation at least, if not in the direction of ”an independent ent.i.ty.”
His work of twelve hundred pages, covering his laborious delvings into the ephemeromorphic world, is conclusive on this point. As a phenomenal manifestation alone, any attempt to define either him or his professional labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea that he is an actual London ent.i.ty. We are very confident that he is not a London non-ent.i.ty, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interst.i.tial logic, not in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonent.i.ties. His a.s.sumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the phenomenal manifestation, is what we propose to deal with.
Now, directly the reverse of this proposition is what is true. An organism cannot exist without life or an independent vital principle in nature, any more than celestial bodies can be held in their place independently of gravitation. The vital principle that organizes must precede the thing organized or the living organism, as the great formative principle of the universe (call it the will of G.o.d, gravitation or what you may) must have existed before the first world-aggregation. In logic, we must either advance or fall back--insist upon precedence being given to cause over effect, or deny their relative connection altogether. The organism is the phenomenal manifestation, not the vital principle which organizes it. To say that there can be no _manifestation_ of life without an organism is true; but to a.s.sume that the vital principle which organizes is dependent on its own organism for its manifestation is absurd. It would be the lesser fallacy to deny the phenomenal fact altogether, and insist that cause and effect are mere intellectual aberrations, or such absurd mental processes as find no correlative expression in nature, as that embodying the idea of either an antecedent or a consequent.
”Plato lived.” He ate, he drank, he talked divinely. He was the occupant of an admirably constructed life-mansion; one that St. Paul would have looked upon as ”the temple of G.o.d,” and all the world would have recognized as a G.o.d-like temple. His head was a study for the Greek chisel; none was ever more perfectly modeled, or artistically executed.
All agreed in this. And yet it was not the _habitat_ but the _habitant_ that attracted the admiration of the Greek mind; enkindled its highest enthusiasm; drew all the schools of philosophy, about him at once. It was the lordly occupant of the temple, the indwelling _Archeus_, presiding over all the organic phenomena and directing all the dynamic powers therein, which was so profoundly present in the living Plato. Even Professor Haeckel, of the famous University of Jena, would not deny this, with all that his new terms ”ontogeny” and ”phylogeny” may imply. When potential life pa.s.sed over into actual life in the individual Plato, it was not the pabulum that a.s.similated the man, but the man the pabulum. If this were not so, then the mere potentiality of growing, as in the case of plants and animals, would be all there is to distinguish the phenomenal manifestation of a Plato from that of a mole or a cabbage-stalk. In other words, if the animating principle of life--or, as the Bible has it, the ”animating soul of life”--is not what manifests itself in material embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor Haeckel mean by his new term ”phylogeny,” which ought to cover the lines of descent in all organic beings?
If it be a question of mere pabulum, it is altogether _mal posA(C)_. Pabulum is nothing without a preA”xisting ”something” to dispose of it. It is not so much as a jelly-ma.s.s breakfast for one of Professor Haeckel's ”protamoebA” for if it were served up in advance, there would be none of his little non-nucleated jelly-eaters to partake of it, much less any of his ”protogenes.” As the famous Mrs. Gla.s.s would say, in her ”hand-book of cookery,” if you want a delightful ”curry,” first catch your hare. But our ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the hare and the curry, in serving up his pabulum to the ”protamoebA
.” The improvident pabulum ”evolves” its own eaters, and then, spider-like, is eviscerated by them, as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life, therefore, begins in the tragedy of Mount CithA
ron, it is to be hoped it will end in the delights of Artemis and her bathing nymphs.
Chapter VIII.
Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100A deg.
C--212A deg. F) they a.s.sume that all living organisms perish, especially when the solutions containing them have been kept, for the s.p.a.ce of fifteen or twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the light of all the experiments which have been made in this direction, there is some doubt as to the entire correctness of their a.s.sumption. That many, if not most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100A deg. C, there is little or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more tenacious of life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is equally unquestionable.
M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature of 120A deg. to 125A deg. C. (248-257A deg. F), while the same spores entirely lose their germinating power after an exposure for half an hour or more to a slightly higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on ”The Action of Heat on Protoplasmic Life,” recently published in the proceedings of the Royal Society, a.s.serts that certain ”black vibrios” are capable of resisting the action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300A deg. F, although exposed therein for half an hour or more. But none of these crucial tests, however diverse in experimental results, really touch the all-important question in controversy. They all relate either to living organisms, or to the seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living indestructible ”germs”--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth itself.
We use the term ”vital unit” in the same restricted sense in which the materialists speak of ”chemical units,” ”morphological units,” etc., which they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies, between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that a.s.similates or aggregates protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
Morphological cells are not therefore ”units,” considered as the least of any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more h.o.m.ogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions give rise to different morphological cells, as differently const.i.tuted soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological character of the infusoria appearing therein.[28] The cells are living organisms springing from vital units, and can no more manifest themselves independently of these units than life can manifest itself independently of an actual organism. And they make their appearance in the proper environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its primordial germ or vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the soil. Everywhere the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the plant or tree precedes the natural seeds it bears.