Part 15 (1/2)

The concurrence of these conditions in the skeleton, the nearly balanced ratio of the bloods, the perfected dent.i.tion, the beard, the deepened voice, the prominent larynx, and the stature, combine to point out, with infallible precision, the age of this Man, as between twenty-five and thirty years.

So far, then, we can with certainty trace back the history of this being, as an independent organism; but did his history then commence? O no; we can carry him much farther back than this. What means this curious depression in the centre of the abdomen, and the corrugated k.n.o.b which occupies the cavity?[89]

This is the NAVEL. The corrugation is the cicatrice left where once was attached the umbilical cord, and whence its remains, having died, sloughed away. This organ introduces us to the foetal life of Man; for it was the link of connexion between, the unborn infant and the parent; the channel, through whose arteries and veins the oxygenated and the effete blood pa.s.sed to and from the parental system, when as yet the unused lungs had not received one breath of vital air.

And thus the life of the individual Man before us pa.s.ses, by a necessary retrogression, back to the life of another individual, from whose substance his own substance was formed by gemmation; one of the component cells of whose structure was the primordial cell, from which have been developed successively all the cells which now make up his mature and perfect organism.

How is it possible to avoid this conclusion? Has not the physiologist irrefragable grounds for it, founded on universal experience? Has not observation abundantly shown, that, wherever the bones, flesh, blood, teeth, nails, hair of man exist, the aggregate body has pa.s.sed through stages exactly correspondent to those alluded to above, and has originated in the uterus of a mother, its foetal life being, so to speak, a budding out of hers? Has the combined experience of mankind ever seen a solitary exception to this law? How, then, can we refuse the concession that, in the individual before us, in whom we find all the phenomena that we are accustomed to a.s.sociate with adult Man, repeated in the most exact verisimilitude, without a single flaw--how, I say, can we hesitate to a.s.sert that such was his origin too?

And yet, in order to a.s.sert it, we must be prepared to adopt the old Pagan doctrine of the eternity of matter; _ex nihilo nihil fit_. But those with whom I argue are precluded from this, by my first Postulate.

XI.

PARALLELS AND PRECEDENTS.

(_Germs._)

”Every cell, like every individual Plant or Animal, is the product of a previous organism of the same kind.”--(DR.

CARPENTER, _Comp. Physiol._ -- 347.)

In the preceding examples I have a.s.sumed that every organic ent.i.ty was created in that stage of its being which const.i.tutes the acme of its peculiar development; when all its faculties are in their highest perfection, and when it is best fitted to reproduce its own image. From the very nature of things I judge that this was the actual fact;[90]

since, if we suppose the formation of the primitive creatures in an undeveloped or infant condition, a period would require to lapse before the increase of the species could begin; which time would be wasted. To those, indeed, who receive as authority the testimony of the Holy Scripture, the matter stands on more than probable ground; for its statements, as to the condition of the things created, are clear and full: they were not seeds, and germs, and eggs, and embryos,--but ”the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself,”--”great whales,”--”winged fowl,”--”the beast of the earth,”--and ”man.”[91]

But I do not mean to s.h.i.+eld myself behind authority. I have begged the _fact_ of creation; but not the truth, nor even the existence, of any historic doc.u.ment describing it. It is essential to my argument that any such be left entirely out of the question; and, for the present, I accordingly ignore the Bible.

It is possible that some opponent may object to my a.s.sumption of maturity in created organisms.

”Your deductions may be sound enough,” such an one may say, ”provided your newly-created Locust-tree had so many concentric cylinders of timber, your Tree-fern had a well-developed stem of leaf-bases, your Coral a great aggregation of polype-cells, your Tortoise a carapace of many-laminated plates, your Elephant a half-worn set of molars, and your Man a thoroughly ossified skeleton. But how do you know that either of these organisms was created in this mature stage? I will not deny that each was created,--was called suddenly out of non-ent.i.ty into ent.i.ty; but I believe, or at least I choose to believe,--that each was created in the simplest form in which it can exist; as the seed, the gemmule, the ovum, the--ahem!”

Pray go on! you were about to say ”the infant,” or ”the foetus,” or ”the embryo,” probably; pray make your selection: which will you say?

”Well, I hardly know. Because, if I choose the new-born infant, you will say, Its condition implies a nine months' pre-existence, certainly; not to speak of the absurdity of a new-born infant being cast out into an open world without a parent to feed it. If I say, The foetus, or the still more incipient embryo, I involve, at once, a pre-existent mother.

I am afraid you have me there!”

I think I have. However, let us take up the matter orderly, and proceed on the supposition that my previous examples must be all cancelled, and the question argued _de novo_, on the a.s.sumption that each organism was created in its least developed condition.

It will not be considered necessary, I suppose, to look at any intermediate condition of the organisms. The argument which is based upon the leaf-scales of the Fern or the Palm would essentially apply to either of these plants when it first issues from the ground. At the period when it comprises but a single frond, the botanist would no more hesitate in p.r.o.nouncing that the organism had pa.s.sed through stages previous to that one, than he would when it possesses an elongated stipe; though, in the latter case, the evidences of the pre-existence are more patent to the uninstructed eye. He would say, The single frond implies, with absolute necessity, a spore in the one case, a seed in the other; and we need not to see either, to be a.s.sured that this must have preceded the leaf-stage.

But you go farther back still. ”The plant was created as a seed.” Let us renew our imaginary tour at the epoch, or epochs (as many as you please), of creation, on this supposition.

Here is a very young plant of the curious Seych.e.l.les Palm or Double Cocoa-nut (_Lodoicea Sech.e.l.larum_). A single frond is all that is yet developed, and this is as yet unexpanded, the pinnae being still folded on the midrib, like a fan. Trace the frond down to its base. It springs from a thick horizontal cylindric process, which has also shot down a radicle into the soil. We trace the cylindrical stem along the surface of the soil, and find, lying on the ground, among the gra.s.s, but not buried, a great double nut, something like the two hemispheres of a human brain, or like a common cocoa-nut, half split open and healed. Out of this the thick stem has issued; and we find that it is only the cotyledon of the seed, that has prolonged its base in the process of germination, in order to throw up, clear of the nut, the plumule and radicle.

We look at the great nut, and find, on the woody exterior of the fibrous pericarp, at the side opposite to that whence issues the cotyledon, a broad scar. What is this? It is the _mark left by the severance of a footstalk_, which united the fruit to the parent plant. This great drupe was once a small ovary seated in the centre of a three-petaled flower, which, with many others, issued out of a great spathe, a ma.s.s of inflorescence, and hung down from the base of the leafy coronal of an adult palm-tree. This scar is an irreproachable witness of the existence of the parent palm.

Here, lying on the dry and dusty earth, is a brown flat bean of great hardness. This is a seed destined by and by to produce that splendid tree _Erythrina crista-galli_. But it has been just created.