move, and have our being. Nature is a Word of God that brings tidings of the past and carries intelligence to the future. Heaven encircles the earth as with embrace of the Almighty's loving kindness. The living particles which are arranged into an organism are adapted to build up the specific form of that organism. What is the energy which gives this tendency? If we say"polarity of organic units;" that is ascribed to atoms for something of which we are ignorant; nor does it explain how living particles, or units, possess the property of arranging themselves into the special organisms which they construct. Can we find a morphological unit, a microscopic cell, by multiplication of which all developmental changes are effected? No, the cell is itself a manifestation of this strange power; and though cells are the ultimate visible components of many organisms, they are not universal. Marvellous as are chemical units, physiological or life units are more complex; their difference of composition leads to differences in the mutual play of energies, and causes the endless variety of existing forms. The Power of God makes all temporal things, and every one plays a part in the grand process by which the great future is prepared. Oken said " Every living thing arose out of slime, and is nothing but slime in various forms. This primitive slime originated in the sea, and from inorganic matter in the course of planetary evolution." Oken might have stated it more correctly and Scripturally: in the water, and out of the earth, the Lord God made things to grow. Haeckel states-"Life is nothing but a connected chain of very complicated material phenomena of motion. These motions must be considered as changes in the position and combination of the molecules." Now, when a man confounds motions with the force making them and then considers that the changes effected are the same as the motions; he confuses results with causes. He professes a wonderful amount of knowledge, yet mistakes the result of life, for life itself. To minimise in words the distinction between living and unliving matter, does not alter the fact that the two are far from one another as the east from the west. Suppose that, under certain circumstances, we generate a low order of life by a peculiar grouping of particles; we shall do it by use of natural power, and the mystery still remains The Physical Basis of Life is not Life. 89 unsolved. To use occulta vis reads not the riddle any more than use of galvanism explains galvanic powers. The formative energy, by which crystallising matter unites, has its inner power by chemical constitution, and its external power by influence of surrounding matter; so in the semifluid state of matter may life have been initiated; but the initiation, the ultimate cause, whether of physical or of vital phenomena, is a centre of mystery. "Autogeny," or spontaneous generation," are dark words of ignorance which put back, not explain, difficulty. 66 The difficulty becomes greater through another fact:The vital substance of the whole universe, identical for one and all living creatures, is semi-fluid, transparent, colourless, structureless. This proves that there exists, beyond our visual and chemical investigations, a distinct and special endowment, a structure in which life stands not still nor nature pauses. He whose Word struck light from solid darkness has not stopped in man. We conjecture things more wonderful. The matter of life is formed by peculiar operation in ordinary matter, and to ordinary matter returns. Fungus and oak, worm and man, die-always are dying; nor can they live unless they die. "In the midst of life we are in death." Does protoplasm, thus living and dying, generate protoplasm, of itself, to form plants, animals, men? No: only when it has been made to live, are vegetables and animals produced. Had we been present when living protoplasm was first made from not-living matter, it is unlikely that the sight would have enabled us scientifically to bring together the physical, chemical, and vital conditions of existence. We may speculate about all forms of life commencing as Monera, or simple particles of protoplasm, and that these monera originated from not-living matter; we may theorise as to the monera acquiring tendencies towards the Protista, others towards the Protophyta, and others towards the Protozoa; but a looker-on at the primal origin of earthly life might not have seen anything more startling, than there is in the beginning of a new life now. It was a marvellous crisis in the world's history, the beginning of a state the results of which no created being can calculate. Every living thing is a cycle of change extending not more to the past than to another life. "The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plainsAre not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns ? * * * * Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with spirit can meetCloser is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this vision-were it not He?" Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism. The particles of living matter possess the same microscopic structure, no physicist can detect any difference, but within that apparent unity are infinite varieties of molecular arrangement. The variety establishes essential differences where human faculties and instruments find none. The unity explains the apparent similarity in the structure of the parrot, the cat, the dog, the monkey; and cradles a higher essence. The life-point, in union with the force-point, or material atom, concentrates a world-wide mystery-which no mere mechanism can explain. "In living centres, far more central than the centre as seen by the highest magnifying powers→→→ in centres of living matter where the eye cannot penetrate, but towards which the understanding may tend-proceed changes of the nature of which the most advanced physicists and chemists fail to afford us the faintest conception." " 1 Living matter takes up non-living matter and makes it live; transmutes force by means of constructive power; as were it a master director, or designer, to produce variety of form for specialities and diversities of use. Life and motion are constantly transmitted from atom to atom by "a power which cannot, under any circumstances, be developed from matter that has not been made to live by the influence of that which is already living." 2 Consider a remarkable assertion: "The absolute commencement of organic life on the globe I distinctly deny. The affirmation of universal evolution is itself the negation of an absolute commencement of anything. Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications, wrought by insensible gradations on a pre-existing kind of being." We are very sorry for 3 "The Mystery of Life :" Dr. Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S. 2 "Life-Theories and Religious Thought: " Dr. Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S. 3 66 Principles of Biology,” vol. i. p. 482: Herbert Spencer, Denial of Beginning. 91 those who think they believe, that life began with portions of protoplasm-not protoplasm; more minute, indefinite, and changeable than those mere fragments of matter called 66 protogenes; " that by a process of action and reaction between incipient types and their environments, and the survival of those fittest to live, after an enormous period of time, the comparatively well-specialised forms of ordinary Infusoria were reached without any beginning: or as Dr. Johnson says-without any original cause. We state the case clearly. The conception of a first organism, in anything like the common or natural meaning, is wholly at variance with a right view of evolution, that life sprang from no life-from nothing! There can be no greater condemnation of an attempted explanation of things: continual commencement, no primal start; all things came out of nothing, yet never began to come out; push back the beginning far enough, do it little by little, and there will be no beginning. You may gradually organise an organism by such imperceptible and inappreciable differentiation, that life never begins as life, nor organism as organism. We are to suppose that there is a vacuum, or something else; this nothing or something is to be turned about, somewhere or nowhere, a very long time, no one can tell by whom, till the churning makes it very hot. Then, cooling down, the particles of this nothing which has become something, further differentiate, assort, adapt, combine. After further myriads of ages, arise beginnings of life which are not beginnings. At length come the protophyta, real beginnings, which insensibly advance into fragrant flowers, cereal plants, fruit and forest trees. With the protophyta, or soon after, grow the protozoa into all the animals. This doctrine is commended by men "Too comic for the solemn things they are, who tell us that the special creation hypothesis must be con- incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." Compare it with the words of Moses"God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself. Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowls that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind." Ask a truly scientific assembly whether "the earth bringing forth and the waters bringing forth," do not equally well explain the very doing of the thing, as the integration and concomitant dissipation, and the passing from some sort of indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, into another sort of definite, coherent heterogeneity? Yet we are told—“ Now that we have arrived at this formula, we find ourselves expressing it in terms that are universal. Instead of a mere law of biology, we have enunciated the widest generalisation concerning the concrete universe as a whole. This leap of inference on Mr. Spencer's part, like the similar leap taken by Newton from the fall of the apple to the motions of the moon, is the daring act which completes the formation of the hypothesis." 2 So when a man translates the formula -"the joining of stuff into a lump, then the equal unjoining and sending out of movement from it, the making stuff pass from a no sort of unstickingness into some sort of holdingtogetherness, while the movement not sent out undergoes a like change from no sort of keeping-togetherness into some sort of sticking," he explains the concrete universe as a whole. Really, we should not have known unless very clever people had told. Now we see that there are pearl gatherers and dirt gatherers: these have the larger store; those with a handful, more precious value. The developments are more marvellous than the mysteries of evolution. Take a vertebrate animal. The germinal vesicle of the ovum contains one or more germinal spots, and is included within a vitellus. The first step in the development of the embryo is the parting of the vitelline substance into cleavage masses, each of which contains a 1 "First Principles," p. 396: Herbert Spencer. |