Part 4 (2/2)
76: Jacques Loeb says that ”whoever claims to have succeeded in making living matter from inanimate will have to prove that he has succeeded in producing nuclein material which acts as a ferment for its own synthesis and thus reproduces itself. n.o.body has thus far succeeded in this, although nothing warrants us in taking it for granted that this task is beyond the power of science.”--”Darwin and Modern Science,” p. 270.
77: ”Worlds in the Making,” 1908, Chapter VIII.
78: ”The Evolution Theory,” II, p. 365.
Lord Kelvin will not go as far as Arrhenius, but believes that a meteorite brought the first living germs to this planet. K. Pearson thinks that under favourable conditions in the remote past life arose, but arose only once, out of the non-living.[79] The bridge was so slender that it was crossed but once under imaginary conditions not controllable by experiment; and as a unique event even in imaginary history it cannot be said to be subject to any general law. It is questionable, in fact, whether in scientific merit the hypothesis is superior to that of special creation.
79: ”Grammar of Science,” one volume edition, pp. 410 ff.
Dr. Schafer sees this and points it out very clearly in his Presidential Address.[80] A scientific account of the origin of life must refer it to causes operating to-day; so, instead of Arrhenius' eternity of life, or of Pearson's spontaneous production of life but once under inaccessible conditions, or Lord Kelvin's meteoric conveyance of life, he believes that life is constantly being produced, and has always been produced, from certain colloidal substances which he describes. But what has become of all this life, constantly generated? He admits there is trace of only one paleontological series. While a.s.suming that it is the nature of life to evolve, he admits that there is no evidence accessible to the senses or discerned as yet by the most delicate instruments for the existence of these countless beginnings of life. The real question then concerns not this kind of life, which eye hath not seen, but the origin of the life which we know, and whose marvellous development evolution traces. Ostwald thinks that ”it is undecided whether originally there were one or several forms from which the present forms sprang, nor is it known how life first made its appearance on earth. So long as the various a.s.sumptions with regard to this question have not led to decisive, actually demonstrable differences in the results, a discussion of it is fruitless, and therefore unscientific.”[81]
80: _Science_, September 6, 1912, pp. 294 ff.
81: ”Natural Philosophy,” p. 175.
A comparison has often been drawn between the birth of the individual and that of the race. Theologians have discussed the question whether the child in his spiritual nature is to be referred to a special act of creative power, or whether all of his endowments are derived from his parents.
To the poet the birth of the child suggests the presence of forces other than those of the seen and temporal. The new life is ”out of the deep, from the true world, within the world we see.” Its roots are in another dimension of being than that of nature or the world of time and sense.
In moments of insight, ”though inland far we be, our souls have sight of that immortal sea which brought us. .h.i.ther.”
Again to the philosopher there is in the individual something indescribable, unique, not to be compressed within the compa.s.s of any general law, something in each individual which his ancestry or antecedents will not explain nor his environment produce.[82]
82: See Royce: ”The World and the Individual,” II, p. 325.
Says a distinguished professor of biology[83]: ”Familiarity with development does not remove the real mystery which lies back of it. The development of a human being, of a personality, from a germ cell seems to me the climax of all wonders, greater even than that involved in the evolution of a species or the making of a world.” He remarks that ”if personality is determined by heredity alone, all teaching, preaching, government, is useless.” The only hope for the race, he says, is in eugenics--always supposing that enough freedom is left to carry out its program.
83: E. G. Conklin: ”Heredity and Responsibility,” in _Science_, January 10, 1913.
If the birth of the individual and the full story of his origin is thus enveloped in mystery for theologian, poet, philosopher and even scientist, it is not to be expected that the problem of the origin of the human race can be solved by a neat formula. Here the mystery of the birth of the individual from parents of the same species is intensified many fold. Here the problems of mind and body, of their genetic and metaphysical relations to each other, and of the ultimate relation of the spirit world to each, press for solution before there can be any full and final answer to the question of the origin of man. Is it any wonder that the single occurrence upon which was based the birth of all future generations which have peopled the earth should be thought to involve more than can be included in any scientific hypothesis?[84]
84: ”No other animal types,” says Wallace, ”make the slightest approach to any of these high faculties [such as are seen in man] or show any indication of the possibility of their development. In very many directions they have reached a limit of organic perfection beyond which there is no apparent scope for further advancement.
Such perfect types we see in the dog, the horse, the cat-tribe, the deer and the antelopes, the elephants, the beaver and the greater apes; while many others have become extinct because they were so highly specialized as to be incapable of adaptation to new conditions. All these are probably about equal in their mental faculties, and there is no indication that any of them are or have been progressing towards man's elevation, or that such progression, either physically or mentally, is possible.”--”Man's Place in the Universe,” 3d (popular) ed., pp. 328, 329.
When we seek to interpret these critical points in the history of the world, such as the origin of life and of man, two roads are open before us. We may emphasize, with the advocates of preformation, the principle of continuity alone; and, explaining the higher by the lower, we may go back as Mr. Noyes would carry us, back on the dwindling track, explaining civilization by savagery, the non-moral by the moral, the conscious by the unconscious, the living by the non-living. In this process, it has been often pointed out, there lurks a sort of _generatio aequivoca_; primitive star-dust is endowed with the attributes of life, of consciousness, and even of purpose and morality. Thus J. A. Thomson says that ”if we see any good reason for believing in the erstwhile origin of the living from the not-living, we give a greater continuity to the course of events, and we must again read something into the common denominator of science--Matter, Energy, and the Ether. We have already read into this Wonder and Mystery, Harmony and Order, and we must now read into it--Progress and, from a philosophical standpoint, Purpose.”[85]
85: ”The Bible of Nature,” pp. 131, 132.
The objection will be made that to regard the primitive atoms or cells as practically self-preserving, self-repairing and self-improving, the fountain of all life, of all consciousness and morality and civilization, is to endow these ent.i.ties with attributes that are manifestly inappropriate.
Seeing the difficulties of a theory of evolution based upon the principle of continuity alone, we may emphasize, with many popular interpreters, not so much this principle of continuity, as that of progress. Evolution would then mean not a mere s.h.i.+fting of the elements, a redistribution of matter and motion, but a creative synthesis, an epigenesis. It will then mean, not ”There is nothing new under the sun,”
but rather, ”What next?” The descent of man will no longer suggest the inference that as the progeny of the brute man must share his destiny, but rather the thought that ”it doth not yet appear what we shall be.”
But how to explain the new element which has arisen, not out of, but alongside of, the others? We would not be content to say, ”Now the inorganic elements incapable of producing life; and now, presto! living matter;” for this after all would be a break in continuity not explained, and would lead once more to a sort of creation _ex nihilo_.
The necessities of the case seem to call for some new conception which shall unite the two great principles of continuity and progress.
III. THEISM AND EVOLUTION
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