Part 10 (1/2)

The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life, wherein lies the ”mystery of mysteries.” It is an important discovery so far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher mystery within the temple built by G.o.d than another may attain to by the accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has made _his_ happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells.

But decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale, although one confidently re-affirmed by our ”Boston Monday Lecturer,” is that which makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only ”living matter.” We have already referred to the phrases ”living matter” and ”non-living matter” as altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the vitalists to take a ”back seat” in the discussions now going forward as to the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical, and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that Professor Beale speaks of ”formed matter,” as if it were a peculiar something--a sort of _tertium quid_--between living and non-living matter.

But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his carmine solutions is the ”only living matter,” and hence a.s.serts, inferentially at least, that all other matter, in any and every living organism, is ”dead matter.” But we may just as confidently aver that no matter is living in any vital organism which has not been a.s.similated and built up into living membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case of man) to his will, as well as performing the autonomous functions of plants and the lower animals. For all these membranous tissues are innumerably thronged with bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the purposes of obedience to man's will, or of performing any autonomous function, but simply to supply the tissues with the necessary nutrient matter to make up for the constant waste that is going on in a healthy living organ. This waste is very much greater than has heretofore been supposed, so that the man or animal of to-day may be an entirely distinct and separate one, considered materially, from that of a year or more ago. And this averment would have a decided advantage over Professor Beale's, since, in meeting a friend, we might be certain that four-fifths of him at least was alive, while the other one-fifth was industriously at work to keep him alive, instead of a stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be, upon the street. Besides, it would obviate the necessity, on the part of the vitalists, of giving themselves four-fifths away to the materialists, as Professor Beale virtually does in the argument.

The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures and brilliant _roulades_, as if the little vocalist had caught its inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or interfere with the occupations a.s.signed them. The machinery that ran their looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat, nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the ”bright gem instinct with music,” is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. _Where_ it is, not man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is uplifted by inspiration, that--

”The soul of music never dies, Nor slumbers in its sh.e.l.l; 'Tis sphere-descended from the skies, And thence returns to dwell.”

Chapter IX.

Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.

Among the more startling, if not decidedly brilliant, vital theories which have been advanced within the last few years, is that which makes life an ”undiscovered correlative of force.” Those who have the reputation of being the profoundest thinkers and delvers in the newly-discovered realm of Force-correlation in Europe, and who have more or less modestly contributed to that reputation themselves, have evidently thought to eclipse, if not to entirely throw into the shade, the great exploit of Leverrier, in pointing out the exact place in their empirical heavens where the superior optics of some future observer shall behold, in all its glory, this ”undiscovered correlative of force,” which they have indicated as lying within the higher possibilities and potentialities of matter.

Precisely what they mean by this undiscovered correlate, is what puzzles us quite as much to determine as it does the materialists to explain. Were they to define life as an ”undiscovered force” simply, their definition would manifestly lack in brilliancy what it would conclusively make up in precision and accuracy of definitional statement. But such a poor metaphrastic and half-circular exposition of vital force would never answer the necessities of that profounder profundity required for the success of modern scientific treatises. Hence the interpolation of this ”correlative” of theirs. Let us ascertain, if we can, what it means, since they are so chary of informing us themselves.

A ”correlate” of a thing--any thing--simply implies the reciprocal relation it bears to some other thing. As a cognate term it expresses nothing, can express nothing, but reciprocity of relations.h.i.+p, such as father to son, brother to sister, uncle to aunt, nephews to nieces, etc.

As applied to vital force, it means nothing more nor less than that this particular force stands in some sort of relations.h.i.+p to the other forces of nature, or, as they would have us believe, the _material_ forces of nature. And the simple strength or potentiality of this relations.h.i.+p is what makes all the difference between the severally related forces of the universe, since it would be as impossible to differentiate a fixed relations.h.i.+p as to change the nature of vital units. But whether vital force, as a distinct correlate, is paternal or filial, brotherly or sisterly, avuncular or amital in its relations.h.i.+p, is not stated. The scientific formula, however, may be stated thus: As A (chemical force) is to B (molecular force) so is C (a third known force) to _x_ (the vital or unknown force); so that, by multiplying the antecedents and consequents together, and eliminating the value of _x_, we may mathematically obtain the value of vital force.

But to eliminate the value of _x_ is what troubles them. Herbert Spencer has tried his hand at it, but failed to express life under any higher correlation than ”molecular force;” nor can he definitely inform us whether either force is third or fourth cousin to the other. But he manifestly regards their relations.h.i.+p as const.i.tuting either a very attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the value of _x_, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology, and gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly contumacious quant.i.ty which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in scientific equations: ”Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular force.” But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not demolished, this machinery, in his recent treatise on ”The Mystery of Life,” we will spare it any further blows, and proceed to the consideration of ”molecular force.”

Before we proceed however, to the consideration of this force, let us definitely understand the meaning of the terms we shall be called upon to use. We can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of ”molecular attraction,” or that force acting immediately on the integrant molecules or particles of a body, as distinguished from the attraction of gravitation which acts at unlimited distances. But when it comes to ascribing other and higher manifestations of power to molecules, such as have not been scientifically shown to exist, we must feel our way with caution, and demand of these pretentious molecules, or rather of their materialistic backers, a reason for the faith, or rather force, that is in them.

It is agreed by all physicists, as well as chemists, that a ”molecule” is the smallest conceivable quant.i.ty of a simple or compound substance, as an ”atom” is the smallest conceivable quant.i.ty of an element which enters into combination with other elements to form material substance. For instance, the smallest conceivable quant.i.ty of water is a molecule, while the smallest conceivable quant.i.ty of either of the two elements of which water is composed, is an atom. In every molecule of water, therefore, there are three elementary atoms, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And since a molecule, as a general rule, contains two or more atoms, and may contain many of them, why not predicate dynamic force of the atoms, which lie one step nearer the elementary forces of nature? For the mightiest forces of nature lie in these elements, when forced into unnatural alliances, or chained up in durance vile. It is in the elements of matter, and not in its molecules, that this tremendous dynamic force resides. Man, knowing this, harnesses them into his service, first by forcing them into unnatural alliances, as in the case of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, and then successfully pitting them in conflict against the rocks and the general inertia of matter. To charge all the destructive work they do on the innocent and harmless molecules, which are two steps removed from the actual force expended, is drawing conclusions from the sheerest hypothetical data. It is the office of ”molecular force,” if there is any meaning to the term beyond what is expressed by ”molecular attraction,” to conserve matter--bind rocks together, not rend them in sunder.

If the dynamic forces of nature lie pent up in the molecules, then man must array molecular force against molecular force in order to rend rocks and tear mountains in sunder. This theory of molecular force, as extended to vital physics in the force-doctrine of life, is irreconcilably at war with the princ.i.p.al phenomena of life, and should be cla.s.sed with the other undiscovered correlates of force, which Professor Beale speaks of as ”the fictions of a mechanical imagination.” The truth is that these much abused and much slandered molecules are the most innocent and harmless things in nature. They never become destructive unless some other force than that inhering in themselves drags them into its service and hurls them along a devastating path. Of themselves, they are the very quintessence of quiessence in the universe, and, when formed in nature's laboratory, at once seek quiet and loving companions.h.i.+p with kindred molecules, and retain it forever afterwards. The idea that they should break away from their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, not in the inclination of the molecules.

If there is any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter, motion, and life, and subst.i.tute new ones in their place. In the multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing the true categories, and a.s.signing to them their proper definitional value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and vital force all under one and the same category, and then interpret their several modes of action on any theory of force-correlation, is not emanc.i.p.ating language from the gross thraldom into which their ”molecular machinery” has driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences, coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable chapter of interchangeable predications. All these different expressions of force are to be tethered together--definitionally bound hand and foot--under the one explanatory head of ”force-correlation.” We protest against the labor of thus unifying all the natural forces of the universe, even if it were practicable under scientific methods.

But Professor Tyndall denies that ”molecular groupings” and ”molecular motions” explain anything--account for anything--in the way of explicating life-manifestations, or determining what life is.[31] And it would be difficult to cite a stronger and more determined materialist as authority on the point we are considering. He says: ”If love were known to be a.s.sociated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and hate with the left-handed, we should remain as ignorant as before, as to the cause of motion.” But there is no proof that the molecules of the brain manifest any other motions than those necessary for keeping up the normal condition of health and vital activity in the brain itself. No one can be certain that he has seen these molecules in a state of mental activity; for where portions of the human brain have been exposed to microscopic examination, even in perfect states of consciousness on the part of those whose brains have been laid bare, there can be no certainty that the molecular action, if any, is referable to one set of movements more than another. And even in the case of animalcules, as seen in the object gla.s.s of the microscope, there is no absolute certainty that their quick, darting or jerking movements are due to any life-manifestation, as heretofore a.s.sumed. Some quite as well defined forms are entirely motionless, and if all were so, it would be idle to predicate vitality of them.[32] These infinitessimal and constantly varying forms, many of them not the one hundred-thousandth part of an inch in length, to say nothing of their other dimensions, may owe their oscillations, wave movements, darting and other manifestations, and even their molecular arrangements and rearrangements, to other causes than those strictly ”vital.” And it should be borne in mind that their actual movements are just as much exaggerated under the microscope as their real dimensions. But as they make their appearance in organic infusions only, they are presumably vital organisms rather than fomentative or mere filamentous yeast-manifestations.

Professor Huxley, while conceding that molecular changes may take place under environing life-conditions, or in protoplasmic matter, denies that the ”primordial cells” possesses in any degree the characteristics of a ”machine,” nor can they undergo any differentiating process by which the character of their manifestations can be changed. And he even denies to them the poor right to originate or in any way modify their own plasma. He says: ”They are no more the producers of vital phenomena, than the sh.e.l.ls scattered in orderly line along the sea-beach are the instruments by which the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted.”

This is undoubtedly true of all cells in which the vital or functional office has ceased, as in the case of Professor Beale's ”formed matter.”

The cells are the result of the vital principle that lies behind them, and simply indicate where life exists, or has manifestly ceased to exist.

Where the vital currents have ceased to flow, the wreck of primordial cells is quite as wide and disastrous as where millions of sea-sh.e.l.ls have been strewn along a desolated and storm-swept sea-beach. They all come, both the cells and sh.e.l.ls, from the preA”xisting vital units, or determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement, without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent tendency to development. For ”conditions” do not determine life; they only favor its manifestation.

But some of the materialists claim that what we call ”vital units,” or invisible, indestructible germs,[33] are at best only ”physical relations;” that they have nothing more than a hypothetical existence, without any independent recognizable quality justifying our conclusions respecting them. But may not this identical language be retortively suggested in the case of their ”correlates of force?” What more than a hypothetical existence have they? Certainly their enthusiasm to get rid of all vital conditions or manifestations, is quite as marked a feature in their speculations respecting life as any enthusiasm we have shown in the verification of vital phenomena, on the established law of cause and effect. They insist upon this law in the case of statical aggregates, and even a.s.sign absolute ident.i.ty of attributes; but when it comes to dynamical aggregates, they fall back on partial ident.i.ty only, and deny the presence of the law altogether.

Nor are they any more felicitous in their treatment of other points in controversy. In speaking of his ”plastide particles,” Professor Bastian, the most defiant challenger of vitalistic propositions now living, says: ”Certain of these particles, through default of _necessary conditions,_ never actually develop into higher modes of being.” Here he makes the absence of ”necessary conditions” the cause of non-development, while he stoutly denies that the presence of such ”conditions” give rise to the development of a pre-existing vital unit. And yet, strange to say, he speaks of the elemental origin of ”living matter” as ”having probably taken place on the surface of our globe since the far-remote period when such matter was first engendered.” But how his ”sum-total of external conditions,” acting upon _dead_ matter, can ”engender” _living_ matter, is one of those ”related heterogenetic phenomena” which he does not condescend to explain. It is by this sort of scientific verbiage that he gets rid of the pre-existing vital principle, or germinal principle of life, which the biblical genesis declares to be in the earth itself.

To be entirely consistent with himself, he should deny the existence of this germinal principle in the seeds of plants themselves, and insist upon the sum-total of external conditions as the cause of all life-manifestations, in the vegetal as in the animal world. There can be no inherent tendency, he should insist, in the seed itself towards structural development, but only external conditions acting upon ”dead matter,” in heterogentic directions. The shooting down of the radicle or undeveloped root, and the springing up of the plumule or undeveloped stalk, is accordingly due to no vital principle in the seed, but to the complexity or entanglement of the molecules wrapped up in their integumentary environment. And this, or some similar fortuitous entanglement of molecules, should account for all life-manifestations, as well as all life-tendencies, in nature. These molecular entanglements should, therefore, be infinite in number, as well as in fortuitous complexity, to account for all the myriad forms of life ”engendered from dead matter” in the material universe.

For if there is any one thing that the materialists insist upon more resolutely than another, it is the fortuitousness of nature--the happening by chance of whatever she does. Formerly it used to be the ”fortuitous concourse of atoms;” now it is the ”fortuitous aggregate of molecules.” By what accidental or fortuitous happening the atoms have dropped out of their scientific categories, and the molecules have been advanced to their commanding place in _absolute accidentalness_, is one of those una.s.signable causes in which they apparently so much delight. We can only account for it on the supposition that they have all become wors.h.i.+ppers of that blind and accidental Greek G.o.ddess, who bore the horn of Amalthea and plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of language and other much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable knack at disposing of them.

The true cause of vital phenomena manifestly depends on these two conditions--the presence of the specific vital unit, and the necessary environing plasma, or nutrient matter, for its primary development.

Without the presence of both of these conditions, or conditioning incidences, there can be no life-manifestation anywhere. And we do not see that anything is gained, even in the matter of scientific nomenclature, by merely subst.i.tuting ”molecular force” for ”vital force,” in the explication of vital phenomena. Even granting that molecular changes do take place during the development of the vital units in their necessary plasmic environment; it by no means follows that these changes are not dependent on the vital principle _as it acts_, rather than on the molecules _as they act_,[34] The higher force should always subordinate the lower in all metamorphic, as well as other processes, of nature. It is the vital principle that differentiates matter--the aggregate of molecules--not matter differentiating the vital principle. No ”molA(C)cules organiques” can ever differentiate an ape-unit into a man-unit, any more than Professor Tyndall can fetch a Plato out of mere sky-mist. Once an ape-unit, always an ape-unit; once a man-unit, eternally a man-unit.

Let the vitalists stick to this proposition--this eternally fixed _unit_ as ”_une idA(C)e dans l'entendement de Dieu,” _ (to use a better French expression than English)--and they can fight the materialists off their own ground anywhere. The one sublime verity of the universe is that ”life exists,” and that it has existed from all eternity _as possible_ in the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind alone. If materialistic science is disposed to b.u.t.t its head against this impregnable proposition, it can do so. The proposition will stand, whatever may happen to the inconsiderate head.

For science may press her devotees into as many different pursuits as there are starting-points to an azimuth circle, and command them to search and find out the ultimate causes of things in the universe, but the forever narrowing circle in one direction, and the forever widening one in the other, would utterly baffle all their attempted research. Whether they descended into the microscopic world, with its myriad-thronged conditions of life, or pa.s.sed upward and outward, in _Sirius-_distances, to the irresolvable nebulA

, where other and perhaps brighter stars might burst upon their view--gleaming coldly and silently down the still enormous fissures and chasms in the heavens--the result would be the same. Wider and wider fields of observation might open upon their view, as the stellar swarms thickened and the power of human vision failed, but the uranological expedition would return no wiser than when it started, and Science would still be confronted with the same illimitability of s.p.a.ce, the same infinitude of matter, and the same incomprehensibility of the world-arranging intelligence that lies beyond. For He who hath garnished the heavens by his spirit--who divideth the sea with his power, and hangeth the earth upon nothing--”_holdeth back the face of his throne and spreadeth his cloud upon it_.”

What if, in one direction, we should find those inconceivably small specks, or mere bioplastic points, which we call ”living matter,” or, in the other direction, those inconceivably vast world-forming ma.s.ses which we call ”dead matter,” who shall say that ”the secret places of the Most High” are not hidden from us, or that when the spirit of G.o.d first moved through these vast fissures and chasms in the heavens upon the face of all matter, there was not imparted to it that ”animating principle of life” of which the biblical genesis speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and molecular theories of life.