STUDY V. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE AND THEORY OF RULE. "We will trust God, the blank interstices E. B. BROWNING. THALES (B.C. 636) considered that water was the source and continuer of life. Diogenes, of Apollonia (B.C. 400), said the air was ȧpx, a beginning, a soul, such as philosophers sought, evolving itself in all life. Democritus (B.C. 460-357) taught that nothing existed but atoms and empty space, all else is mere opinion. Epicurus (B.C. 341-270) asserted that the mechanical shock of atoms is the all-sufficient cause of things. It was early maintained by Empedocles (he flourished B.C. 450), that the fittest survive, and unfit combinations rapidly disappear. Thence, till our own time, a few scientific men have held that "Nature does all things, does them of herself without God." "The mechanical shock and interaction of atoms trying of motions and unions from all eternity, without any determination by intelligent design, account sufficiently for the constitution and phenomena of the universe." Atoms, individually dead, without sensation and intelligence, get up of themselves, run together, and being together, form all actual and imaginable combinations, as if under a drill-master, without a drill-master. Every one, by itself, is dead; yet, together, they live. When apart they are without sensation, and possess no intelligence; but, collectively, they possess sensation, are full of wisdom, and form the universal mind-if there is any mind. We are told,-"The physical philosopher can know nothing but matter, force, space, and necessity." Were we not sure that there is indeed Intelligence at the heart of things, these men with their theories, which place our feet on the rungs of a ladder, the reverse of Jacob's, and leading to the antipodes of heaven, would make us say— "We are sick, and heart-sore, And weary; let us sleep But deep, deep; Never to waken more." Men, who believe anything that is not in Scripture, assert that all things exist by "a continual becoming," and that this intelligible hypothesis explains everything-"matter being eternal." Then we are told,-" Matter itself, as generally conceived, does not necessarily exist, but may be only a phenomenal centre of energy;" indeed, "matter is but the hypothetical mode of our own consciousness." This is delightfully clear,-naught is everything and everything is naught. Some discern in matter "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life;" but, nevertheless, the "chasm" between our consciousness and this matter "must ever remain intellectually impassable." "Everything may be explained on mechanical principles;" yet, certainly things exist which are not material. "The so-called 'imponderables,'-things of old supposed to be matter-such as heat, light, etc., are now known by the purely experimental, and therefore the only safe method to be but varieties of what we call 'energy."" "1 In maintenance of this principle it is affirmed, "There is one energy, and that is mechanical;" chemical energy is mechanical, only something different. "A living organism is entirely. mechanical," but with its mechanical and chemical relations, has something else which is not like matter, nor like mechanical force. It may be fairly questioned by plain men, whether science is not hindered by such statements; chemical energy is something more than mechanical power, if, at the same time, it is something different; and a living organism is not wholly mechanical if it contains something not explainable by mechanics. 1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 17: P. G. Tait. A professor supposes, "that by the different grouping of the same units, and then by combination of the unlike groups, each with its own, or each with other kinds, you get everything else;" another professor talks about "Nature's great progression from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will," and the thing is done. The former professor gravely assuring us, "the system is now complete, no further advance in the same direction is probable or required." The latter stating, those who do not accept it have not kept pace with recent advances in natural history, are behind in science, and generally unworthy of consideration. So there is causality, but no cause; power, but no person; rule, but no ruler; and we are to graduate under Mephistopheles, who said,— "More brains have I than all the tribe Of doctor, magister, master, and scribe; Nor hell, nor devil has terrors for me." FAUST. The physical action which accompanies vital and mental changes is said to be an undulatory displacement of molecules, resulting in myriads of little waves or pulses of movement, so that states of consciousness are attended by the transmission of a number of little waves from one nervecell to another. Now, because life and consciousness and thought thus act on our bodies, we are told that the unit of motion is identical with the unit of feeling; that between the two there is such an unfailing parallelism that the one group of phenomena can be correctly described by formulas invented to describe the other group. Why, it is equal to the absurdity of saying that the oscillations of a needle are identical with magnetism, and that the two are to be recognised as one. These material phenomena are modes in which our existence reveals itself. They are not the occult reality, but the effects; and it may be that if we could know the intimate essence of our own mind, we might have a glimpse of that Inscrutable Existence of whom the universe is a multiform manifestation. We are told,—" Life essentially consists in the continuous adjustment of relations within the organism to relations in the environment,"-it is nothing of the kind; the adjustment is caused by life, is the exhibition of life, not life itself. Some, seeking great accuracy, state :-"In the vegetal world, and in the lower regions of the animal world, the life is purely, or almost purely, physico-chemical; it becomes more and more predominately psychical as we ascend in the animal world, until at the summit it is mainly psychical." Now, physicists are well aware that we do not know matter, only know states of consciousness which we call perceptions of resistance, extension, colour, sound, odour; do not know motion, only know the sequent states of consciousness produced in the muscles of the eyes, or of the tactual, or of other organs, in the act of attending to the moving object; it is therefore rather strange that they should expect to be believed that, by this thing which they know not, they are able, without any occulta vis, to explain some other thing which is more unknowable. No one pretends that he can "cognise this occulta vis; yet it is sought, strange to say, among the dead; for taking protoplasm, that substance in which life manifests itself, they kill it, find three compounds, carbonic acid, water, ammonia, the result of decomposition, which certainly possess no properties other than those of ordinary matter, and then try to find amongst these dead, the life-the occulta vis. Not finding it, they assert,-"This protoplasm is composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated, and is again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done." Then, to excuse the blunder of seeking the living among the dead, it is stated, "the compounds or constituents of protoplasm, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless; but when brought together, under certain conditions, they exhibit the phenomena of life." When we ask for proof, and carbonic acid, water, and ammonia are brought together, there is no protoplasm, nor any sign of life, nor is any process known in our laboratories by which life can be brought into existence. The mystery remains unsolved. Why the substance protoplasm should manifest properties which are not manifested by any of its constituents we do not know, and very likely we never shall know. Mysterious as the fact is, it is common; for every chemical synthesis is the manifestation of a new set of properties equally insoluble. We say equally insoluble, yet must add, that though by chemical synthesis we do produce new sets of properties, we cannot, by any synthesis, construct organisable matter; the affinities of life and living matter belong to a chemistry which we do not understand, nor can we imitate. We cannot even make the dead matter, not a bit of that material which has the chemical relations of protoplasm; nor, if we had this dead matter could we give it the breath of life, or restore life to the tissue whence it had departed. A peculiar operation must have accompanied the advent of life. By some grouping of particles into peculiarity of structure, by some undulatory displacement of molecules resulting in myriads of little waves or pulses of movement, by some energy, there was a new work. This new energy became one of the so-called natural powers: and now if a stone falls, if fire burns, if life lives, if mind thinks, it is an effect from the Great Unknown; not by fresh effort every time the stone falls, or fire burns, but by continual operation of the energy originally infused. This may be illustrated by growth. "The faculty of combining heterogeneous compounds into matter like itself— growth, in fact is the very thing possessed by no other substance in the world." It is the product of an occult power, and protoplasm is on an equality with complicated organised beings. Let it be imagined that over the table and on the floor are spread in confused mass all the letters of the alphabet, capital and small, thousands intermingling; these are seen to be slowly adjusting themselves, until every scattered type has come into due place, and arranged itself for the printer to take the impression of a book. Of course some invisible power is at work. Work more wonderful than this is wrought by protoplasm, and any attempt to minimise the distinction and difference between living matter and dead albumen and protein is to confuse counsel. Take some complicate chance formation 1 "The Protoplastic Theory of Life:" J. Drysdale, M.D., pp. 184, 185. |