Part 24 (1/2)
”Your andbut an involuntary and inevitable reaction to a certain stiht, then I'm a buttercup--but that's neither here nor there Loeb--all he did was to restate destiny, one of humanity's oldest ideas, in the terht Omar Khayyam chemically reincarnated in the Rockefeller Institute Nevertheless those who accept his theories have to admit that there is essentially no difference between their inet
”Equally nevertheless, Goodwin, the iron does meet Haeckel's three tests--it can receive a stimulus, it does react to that stimulus and it retains memory of it; for even after the current has ceased it reth, conductivity and other qualities that were e of that current; and as time passes this memory fades Precisely as so up of qualities remains with us after the experience has passed, and fades away in the ratio of our sensitivity plus retentiveness divided by the tiinal experience--exactly as it is in the iron”
Professor Jacques Loeb, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, ”The Mechanistic Conception of Life”
CHAPTER XVI CONSCIOUS METAL!
”Granted,” I acquiesced ”We now come to their means of locoress through space against the force of gravitation Man's walk is a series of rhythainst this force that constantly strives to drag him down to earth's face and keep hinetic vibration akin to the force which holds, to use your sinet A walk is a constant breaking of the current
”Take a h the lantern rapidly and he sees and recoveries that are the te as we see it
”I take it that the ravitational current just as much as is our own movement, but by a rhythm so swift that it appears to be continuous
”Doubtless if we could so control our sight as to adh ould see this apparently smooth motion as a series of leaps--just as we do when the motion-picture operator slon hisin a series of stu in this phenomenon which the human mind cannot conceive as possible; therefore intellectually we still remain masters of the phenoht cannot encompass which it need fear”
”Metallic,” he said, ”and crystalline And yet--why not? What are we but bags of skin filled with certain substances in solution and stretched over a supporting and ely orycalls Protobion came after untold millions of years us with our skins, our nails, and our hair; came, too, the serpents with their scales, the birds with their feathers; the horny hide of the rhinoceros and the fairy wings of the butterfly; the shell of the crab, the gossa wonder of the ory, FRSDSc, Professor of Geology, University of Glasgow
”Is there any greater gap between any of these and the metallic? I think not”
”Not materially,” I answered ”No But there remains--consciousness!”
”That,” he said, ”I cannot understand Ventnor spoke of--how did he put it?--a group consciousness, operating in our sphere and in spheres above and below ours, with senses known and unknown I got--glireed for reasons that sees metallic, dick,” I replied ”But that does not necessarily mean that they are co ory has pointed out, crystals and e call living matter had an equal start in the first essentials of life We cannot conceive life without giving it the attribute of so but conscious, and there is no other stier
”The crystals eat The extraction of power from food is conscious because it is purposeful, and there can be no purpose without consciousness; siy is also purposeful and therefore conscious The crystals do both And the crystals can transmit all these abilities to their children, just as we do For although there would seeantic size under favorable conditions--yet they do not They reach a size beyond which they do not develop
”Instead, they bud--give birth, in fact--to smaller ones, which increase until they reach the size of the preceding generation And like the children of row on precisely as their progenitors!
”Very well, then--we arrive at the conception of a , which by some explosion of the force of evolution has burst froe into these Things that hold us And is there any greater difference between the forms hich we are fa amphibian which is our remote ancestor? Or between that and the a stomach from which it evolved? Or the amoeba and the inert jelly of the Protobion?
”As for what Ventnor calls a group consciousness I would assuence such as that shown by the bees and the ants--that in the case of the former Maeterlinck calls the 'Spirit of the Hive' It is shown in their groupings--just as the geos shows also clearly their crystalline intelligence
”I submit that in their rapid coordination either for attack orpassed between the units, there is nothingof a hive of bees where also without apparent coatherers, chemists, bread-o with the old queen, leaving behind sufficient nu queen
”All this apportionment is effected without any nize Still it is ent selection
For if it were haphazard all the honeyht leave and the hive starve, or all the che bees not be properly prepared--and so on and so on”
”But metal,” he muttered, ”and conscious It's all very well--but where did that consciousness come from? And what is it? And where did they come from? And most of all, why haven't they overrun the world before this?
”Such development as theirs, such an evolution, presupposes aeons of ti up fro--why haven't they been ready to strike--if Ventnor's right--at humanity until now?”