Part 2 (2/2)
When lime is laid on waste ground we are told that white clover will spring up spontaneously, and in situations where no clover-seed could have been left dormant in the soil (p. 182). But how is this to be proved? It is certain that seeds will remain dormant in the soil for centuries, and then spring up the first year the soil is turned up by the plough. Some seeds have retained their vitality for thousands of years in the old tombs of Egypt; they have been repeatedly brought to England, sown, and produced good wheat.
We are next told that wild pigs never have the measles, they are produced by a _hyatid_ and the result of domestication; that a _tinea_ is found in dressed wool that does not exist in its unwashed state; that a certain insect disdains all food but chocolate, and that the larva of _oinopota cellaris_ only lives in wine and beer. All these are articles manufactured by man, and are adduced as proofs of animal life, independent of any primordial egg. The entoza are dwelt upon; they are creatures living in the interior of other animals, of which the tape-worm that infests the human body is a melancholy instance. In these ill.u.s.trations we think the author has some show of reason, for we feel convinced that there is such a thing as spontaneous generation from the inorganic substance, wisely provided for clearing the earth of noxious effluvia and putrid matter, and converting them into new elements conducive to health and life. We believe in this source of vitality from its wisdom and necessity, its necessity and wisdom, in our estimate, being strong presumptive proofs of its existence in harmony with the general forecast and economy of nature. Of the self-originating spring of life, some of the examples adduced by the author are proofs, and of which we have familiar ill.u.s.trations in cheese-mites, maggots in carrion, and the green fly that breeds so profusely in weak and decaying vegetation; in all which by some inscrutable law the organic germ, without an antecedent, appears to evolve from the dead or putrifying ma.s.s for its riddance and trans.m.u.tation.
Conceding, however, thus far to the author, we are not prepared to admit that the creative powers of Messrs. CROSSE and WEEKES has been established. These gentlemen are said (p. 190) to have introduced a stranger in the animal kingdom, a species of _acarus_ or mite amidst a solution of silica submitted to the electric current. The insects produced by the action of a galvanic battery continued for eleven months are represented as minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles. One of the creatures resulting from this elaborate term of gestation was observed in the very act of emerging, in its first-born nudity, and sought concealment in a corner of the apparatus. Some of them were observed to go back into the parent fluid and occasionally they devoured each other; and soon after they were called to life, they were disposed to multiply their species in the common way! So much for the experiment; against its verity it is alleged, first, that the _Acarus Crossii_ are not a new species, or if new, that neither Mr.
CROSSE nor Mr. WEEKES, who repeated Mr. CROSSE'S experiment, produced them, but only aided by the voltaic battery the development of the insects from their eggs. Such a mode of generation is contrary to all human experience, and can only be believed in on the strongest corroborative proof.
Neither by chemistry nor galvanism can man, we apprehend, be more than instrumental and co-operative, not originally and independently creative. In almost every form of life, whether animal or vegetable, art can multiply varieties,--can train, direct--but cannot form new species.
This is the mockery of science. With all its invention and resource, it cannot produce organic originals. It can rear a crab-apple into a golden-pippin, or wild sea-weed into a luxuriant cabbage; it can raise infinite varieties of roses, tulips, and pansies, but can create no new plant, fruit, or flower. Man can make a steam-engine, or a watch, but he cannot make a fly, a midge, or blade of gra.s.s. He is an ingenious compiler, but not a creator; and his powers of manufacture and conversion are restricted within narrow boundaries. He cannot wander far in the indulgence of his fancies without being recalled, and compelled to return to the first models set by the Great Architect. The further he strays from primitive types in the effort to improve, by crossing, cutting, and grafting, and proportionably less becomes the procreative force. Hybrids are notoriously sterile. Garden fruit is not permanent, and requires to be renewed from seed. The law seems universal in plants and animals, that the vital energy or germ is less forcible and prolific in the pampered and artificial, than in the natural and wild races.
HYPOTHESIS OF THE VITAL PRINCIPLE.
It is ascertained that the basis of all vegetable and animal substances consists in nucleated cells--that is, cells having granules within them.
Nutriment is converted into these before being a.s.similated by the system. It has likewise been noted that the globules of the blood are reproduced by the expansion of contained granules; ”they are, in short,”
says the _Vestiges_, ”_distinct organisms multiplied by the same fissiporous generation_. So that all animated nature may be said to be based on this mode of origin; _the fundamental form of organic being is a globule, having a new globule forming within itself_, by which it is in time discharged, and which is again followed by another and another, in endless succession. It is of course obvious, that if these globules could be produced by any process from inorganic elements, we should be ent.i.tled to say that the fact of a transit from the inorganic to the organic had been witnessed.” (p. 176.) ”Globules,” the author continues, ”can be produced in alb.u.men by electricity. _If_, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to be reproductive, it _might_ be said that the production of alb.u.men by artificial means is the only step in the process wanting. This has not yet been effected.” (p. 177.)
These are the advances towards generation by chemistry and electricity.
The process, however, according to this detail, appears still far from complete. Alb.u.men is to be produced ”by artificial means;” and even then we should doubt entire success. Chemists have long commanded the power to resolve the seeds of animal and vegetable life into their elements; they have a.n.a.lysed them, and shown the exact weight and proportion of each const.i.tuent; but they never could put them together again, or, by any similar compound produce the primordial egg or organic germ, from which a living being would arise. A connecting link--a vital spark, or animating soul--is always wanting to complete the existence of the Prometheus of the laboratory. Mark, too, the ”_if_,” and the ”_might_,”
in this most lame and impotent hypothesis:--”_If_, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells which are held to be reproductive, it _might_ be said,” &c. Globules can be easily produced; the pa.s.sage of the electric fluid through water will produce aerial globules in rapid and expansive movement; boys can produce them with suds and a tobacco-pipe in rapid succession, each, for aught we know, containing a ”granule” that multiplies by ”fissiporous generation.” But these are not organic globules, and the author has committed the great perversion in language or logic of confounding the organic globule of life with the inorganic globule of a chemist. His theory is more fanciful than that of LAMARCK, from whom it is derived, and who had, at least, his _pet.i.t corps gelatineux_ to begin with--to commence weaving organic tissue from--but our author's organic globule is not so substantive a conception; and as he does not pretend to be able to produce even this by physical means, he has not made a single step in generation.
This we consider the least satisfactory and successful portion of the author's work. It a.s.signs no intelligible cause for the origin of life--it only _begs the question_, by the subst.i.tution of one mystery for another. His law of DEVELOPMENT is of the same description,--without sense or significancy, unsupported by applicable facts, and is not so comprehensible a cause of vital changes as LAMARCK'S a.s.signed progressive tendencies of animals to master the appliances essential to their wants.
ANIMAL AFFINITIES, INSTINCT, AND REASON.
The scheme of the _Vestiges_ is uniformly and consistently worked out; all phenomena are resolved into gravitation and development--the first as the law of inorganic, the latter of organic matter. By the last, however, no new principle is revealed, only a new phrase devised, by the amplified application of which the author's entire system may be said to be _begged_ rather than proved; since development is used in a sense implying an indefinite power of animate and inanimate creation; so that at last we make no new discovery, only grasp a new nomenclature.
But the author is always interesting, either by the novel display of facts or the ingenious concatenation of plausibilities. Consistently with his fundamental notion of animal trans.m.u.tation, he tries to prove a family likeness or affinity from the humblest to the highest species. In this way he seeks to explain the marvel with respect to the huge bulk of many of the tertiary mammalia--the mammoth, mastadon, and megatherium; they were in immediate descent from the cetacea, or whale and dolphin tribe. (p. 267.) Again, human reason is considered no exclusive gift; it exists subordinately in the instinct of brutes, and is alleged to be nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar to the faculties in a humble state of endowment, or early stage of development. CUVIER and NEWTON are only intellectual expansions of a clown; and this notion is extended to moral obliquities, the wicked man being characterised as one ”whose highest moral feelings are rudimental.” (p. 358.) From a like principle the writer concurs with Dr. PRICHARD, that mankind may have had a common origin; that there exists no diversities of colour or osseous structure not referable to climatable or other plastic agencies influencing the development of the different races, commencing with the lowest, or Negro tribe, and ascending upward through the intermediate aboriginal American, Mongolian, and Malay, to the last and most perfect stage of the Caucasian type.
Into the verity of these conclusions we are not called upon to enter; they have been long in controversy, involve a great array of facts and inductive inferences, and we have only referred to them as corollaries or collaterals of the author's hypothetical fabric.
RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TENDENCIES.
We have no charge of impiety to bring against the _Vestiges_. Final causes, or to express ourselves more intelligibly, a _purpose_ in creation, is nowhere impugned. The Deity is not degraded by impersonification in the form and frailties of mortality, but everywhere the author reverently bows to that august and unsearchable name, acknowledges the grand and benevolent design--the admirable adaptation of every created thing to its end and place, and finally concludes in a strain of grateful and exulting Optimism, that we confess we have not fully arrived at--namely, that everything ”is very good.” (p. 387.) From this impression we have only one constructive drawback to notice in the author's mechanical but fanciful const.i.tution of the universe, by which a special Providence in the government of the world seems to be dispensed with, and the Almighty is placed in the sinecure position of the Grand Elector of the Abbe SIEYES, with nothing to do. But no divine attribute is abscinded--no glory of Omnipotence dimmed--whether it pleases him to rule by direct interpositions of power, or his own pre-ordained eternal laws.
Still less can we detect in the speculative inquiries of the _Vestiges_ conclusions hostile to the moral and social interests of the community.
Men are formed to be what they are; vice and crime are the fruits of malorganization, and malorganization is the result of the unfavourable conditions in which the subject of it has been placed, prior or subsequent to birth. These are the author's leading metaphysical inculcations. They impose grave duties upon individuals and upon society, rightly understood and applied, but we cannot discern a hurtful tendency in them. They are useful knowledge, knowledge that it would be well for parents and rulers to master, by showing the importance of education, of favourable circ.u.mstances, and of good moral and physical training, for rearing happy, well-ordered, and virtuous members of the community. Supreme in intelligence, man, we firmly believe, is not less supremely blessed in the means of felicity, provided his real nature and position in the scheme of creation were understood, recognised, and carried out. He has his place, his office, and his destiny; he is no enigma but as an individual; ”in the ma.s.s,” as the author emphatically remarks, ”he is a mathematical problem.” His conduct is uniform and consistent; the result of known and ascertainable causes--causes calculable and predicable in their consequences, as the statistics of crime have incontestibly established.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ON THE VESTIGES.
The heavens are wonderful, and the earth is wonderful, and man, who, by force of intellect, has sought to comprehend the immensity of one and unravel the formation of the other, is hardly less wonderful than either. Still the great mystery remains unriddled; our researches have brought us no nearer the beginning, and the first cause of all continues unapproachable and undefinable as ever. Instead of explaining physical creation, we begin with it; we take the existence of matter for granted, and its attributes for granted, and forthwith begin to fabricate a universe, without first ascertaining whence was matter, or whence the laws by which it is impressed, and has been governed in its evolutions.
Nature's greatest phenomena are the celestial s.p.a.ces and the bodies that fill them; our own planet and its living occupants. Upon each of these, their commencement and subsequent vicissitudes, the _Vestiges of Creation_ have propounded an hypothesis, but one mystery is only sought to be explained by another still more mysterious. For the fiat of a Creator chemical affinities and mechanical laws have been subst.i.tuted, but aided by these the author has failed to produce a world such as we find it. Hence we are again driven upon the old tradition, the old sacred authority, that the world was created out of nothing; and this is as easy to comprehend as the solution of the _Vestiges_, that it sprang from that which is certainly next to nothing--a heated fog or universal fire-mist.
When the author deals with the facts of science he interests and instructs, but when he speculates he only amuses or perplexes, without advancing knowledge. His terse and luminous description of the astral firmament deeply impresses with the might and the magnitude of the vast design; but when he attempts to account for the elimination of suns and worlds, their formation and arrangement, we are struck by the puerile folly of his conjectural presumptions.
Descending from this august and glittering canopy to our own planet, we are not less astonished by the exhibition of the extraordinary revolutions it has undergone. Geology is the true historian of the earth. Conducted by the lights it affords, we see an eternity of ages has rolled before us; we discover a series of worlds rising through the depths of ocean from the central sphere of heat, amidst boiling floods and volcanic fires, each new platform of existence, that countless periods of time had been requisite to form, peopled with its own congenial forms of organic life, mostly commencing with the simpler, and ascending by almost imperceptible gradations to the higher and more complex structures of being. We are struck by the correspondence, by the _pari pa.s.su_ development and formation of the earth's crust and organic existences, and we are apt hastily to conclude that a relation has subsisted between them, that contemporary changes have been cause and effect, and that the improvement of the earth produced the correlative improvement in animals and plants.
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