Whatever the giant may feel, if the theory of Evolution is true, the 'poor beetle' certainlyfeels an almost irreducible minimum of pain, probably none at all."[13]
We may add to all these considerations the further fact that we are constantly finding out that things have their use which had been too hastily assumed to be mere blots upon Nature. The desert and the volcano, for instance, have often been regarded in that light. But we have lately been assured that both are needed for the supply of atmospheric dust, which is a necessary condition of the rain-fall; so that they are really essential to life upon the planet. Beyond question, then, there is very much to be said in mitigation of the terrible difficulty occasioned by what appear to be the havoc and the prodigality of Nature.
And yet—when all has been said—a residuum does remain of inexplicable misery and distress, and there are times when we are all of us constrained to cry out with Darwin that it is "too much," and to ask whether there is not some further clue to the mystery. And then it may well be that there comes to our mind an answer that has been given from the very first moment at which human beings have thought at all. It is an answer which has seemed inevitable alike to the simplest and the wisest.
Carlyle once told of two Scottish peasants who found themselves for the first time at Ailsa Crag. They stared in astonishment at the great sea-precipices. At last one said to the other: "Eh, Jock, Nature's deevilish!"[14] That was the view taken by the primitive races of the world, as their worships and incantations bore witness. It is a view which cannot be lightly dismissed as having nothing at all in its support. We may minimise the evil that is at work around and within us as we will, but, when we have done our utmost, we shall be unlike the vast majority of our race if we are not compelled to admit that there is that in the world which it is quite impossible to ascribe to the immediate action of an entirely good and beneficent God.
Is it then to be thought incredible that the order of the world should have been interfered with, at an early stage in its development, in such a way that the disarrangement was left to work out its fatal mischief by means of the very constancy of the great system of laws which make for a regular development? How this might conceivably have occurred has been set out by an anonymous writer in a remarkable book which ought to be better known than it is.It was published some years ago,[15] and bears the suggestive title ofEvil and Evolution. The author maintains that the original motive in all living things was self-preservation for self-realisation; and that this elementary law was in itself necessary and good, the essential condition of progress. But just as we to-day know well how hard it is to draw the line which distinguishes a right self-seeking from the wrong, so it has been from the outset. The distinction is a fine one, and the balance is easily upset. We have but to suppose that this perversion of the right and lawful happened at an early stage, to see that nothing more would have been required to account for the subsequent heritage of woe.[16] After speaking of the innocent "kind of comparative strife that we see in the fields and forests around us," in which "there may be nothing that we cannot reconcile with the perfect beneficence of the GreatDesigner and Creator," this writer goes on to say: "But the moment that evolution has attained that point at which the struggle begins to involve pain and unhappiness, it becomes quite another matter. The moment that rudimentary but happy and congenial life begins to be overshadowed by fear, or debased by conscious cruelty, the moment that process of evolution begins to evolve not only cruel selfishness in its most odious forms, but deceit and artifice and treacherous cunning in the warfare which one animal wages with another, then I think you may be certain of one of two things—either the Creator is not all-benevolent, or that that scheme is somehow working out as He never intended it should: there must have been some disturbing and hostile influence."[17]
This is well put, but the interest of the book chiefly consists in its attempts to show in detailed instances how things that are evil may have been made so. The author boldly argues that, if the normal course had been followed, "birds and beasts of prey and venomous reptiles would never have been evolved." "Evolutionists," he says, "are agreed that it is just the fierce struggle of created things that has produced these birds and beasts of prey, and that there can belittle doubt that it is the malignity of the struggle that has produced the venom of so many reptiles."[18] Instances are given in which such venom may now be developed as the result of rage or terror in an otherwise harmless animal.
"A few years ago it was reported that the late M. Pasteur 'cultivated' the poison of human saliva to such a point that he was able to produce with it many of the effects of the most virulent snake poisons."[19] Had they not been inflamed by the terror of the struggle for existence, "tigers and hyaenas, vultures and sharks, ferrets and polecats, wasps and spiders, puff-adders and skunks" might have turned their undoubted abilities in other more desirable directions.[20] Again, "it is the perpetual effort, generation after generation, through long ages, to repair the mischief inflicted by enemies," that accounts for "the fecundity of the codfish and other creatures. The more prolific it becomes, the more enemies it can feed; and the more they multiply, the more prolific it grows." A vicious circle indeed! Even "earthquakes, storms, droughts, deluges," are explained as due to a certain want of balance and failure in adjustment.[21]
Certainly, if we had to choose between the ideaof a careless or indifferent God, and the belief in a God who has given us ample proofs of a generally beneficent purpose, but who has, for reasons of the meaning of which we as yet can have only the vaguest conceptions, allowed Himself to be hindered and thwarted on the way to His goal, with results of suffering to Himself even greater than those endured by His creatures; if these were the alternatives before us, there can scarcely be one of us who would hesitate to say towards which of them his reason and conscience would confidently point him.
[1]Origin of Species, Chap. III.
[2]Life and Letters.
[3]Thoughts on Religion, pp. 92, f.
[4] p. 94.
[5]Life and Letters, I., p. 309.
[6] Address by Sir Frederick Treves at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, October, 1905.
[7] p. 380.
[8] p. 377.
[9] p. 381.
[10] p. 375.
[11] p. 383.
[12] p. 377. Among the illustrations that have been adduced of the insensibility of the lower organisms, none perhaps is more extraordinary than this: "A crab will continue to eat, and apparently relish, a smaller crab while being itself slowly devoured by a larger one!"—(Transactions of Victoria Institute, Vol. XXV., p. 257).
[13] p. 384.
[14] William Allingham'sDiary, p. 226.
[15] In 1896, by Messrs. Macmillan.
[16] In one instance, at least, Darwin had pictured in his imagination the steps by which a "strange and odious instinct" may have been developed from comparatively innocent beginnings. He was referring to the ejection by the young cuckoo of its companions from the nest. "I can see no special difficulty in its having gradually acquired, during successive generations, the blind desire, the strength and structure necessary for the work of ejection." "The first step towards the acquisition of the proper instinct might have been mere unintentional restlessness on the part of the young bird."—Origin of Species, p. 200.
[17] Pp. 135, f.
[18] P. 142.
[19] P. 143.
[20] P. 144.
[21] P. 232.
The position, as we have described it, was that which may be said to have existed up to about twenty years ago. Since then much new light has come. Indeed, Lord Kelvin, speaking at Clerkenwell on February 26th, 1904, is reported inThe Timesto have said, referring to the extraordinary progress of scientific research, that it "had, perhaps, been even more remarkable and striking at the beginning of the twentieth century than during the whole of the nineteenth."
Let us take first that which he had more particularly in mind, the advance in the knowledge of the constitution of Matter.
In an address delivered before the British Association at Bradford in 1873, Clerk Maxwell had stated the conclusions to which science had, up to that time, been led in its investigations of matter. Throughout the natural universe it had been shewn, by Spectrum Analysis, that matter is built up ofmolecules. These molecules, according to the most competent judgment, were incapable of sub-division without change of substance, and were absolutely fixed for each substance. "A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius, or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time." The relations of the parts and movements of the planetary systems may and do change, but "the molecules—the foundation-stones of the natural universe—remain unbroken and unworn."
As a result of this, it was maintained that "the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of being a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent." "Not that science is debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces ... but, in tracing back the history of matter, science is arrested when she assures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and on the other that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural."
So the case had stood for some while until science, through its indefatigable inquirers, shewed that it was in very deed "not debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a molecule," nor, perhaps, from taking it to pieces. In 1895 came thediscovery of the X-rays by Röntgen in Germany, to be followed in a year by Becquerel's discovery of spontaneous radio-activity, and in a couple of years by the remarkable further discovery, made by Madame Curie, of what was termed "radium," a substance that went on producing heatde novo, keeping itself permanently at a higher temperature than its surroundings, and spontaneously producing electricity.
This in itself was a new fact of extraordinary interest. For long, discussion had been waged between two departments of scientific inquirers. The geologists and biologists had demanded hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of millions of years to allow for the developments with which they were concerned. The physicists, led by Lord Kelvin, refused to admit the demand, claiming that it could be proved mathematically that it was impossible that the sun could have been giving out heat at its present rate for more than a hundred million years, at the very outside. The appearance of radium robbed this argument of its cogency. It is true that an examination of the sun's spectrum has not, as yet, revealed any radium lines, but it is well known that helium, a transformation product of radium, is present in it.
And this modification of our views as to theprobable age of our solar system was far from being the only result of this latest discovery. Investigations which followed into radio-activity led the Cambridge professors, Larmor and Thomson, to conclude that electricity existed in small particles, which were called "electrons."[1] These seem to be the ingredients of which atoms are made. A molecule is composed of two or more atoms. That of hydrogen, for example, has two; that of water three; and so on up to a thousand or more.
Molecules are very small. If a drop of water were magnified to the size of the globe, the molecules would be seen to be less than the size of a cricket ball!
Atoms are much smaller. "The atoms in a drop of water outnumber the drops in an Atlantic Ocean." Electrons are much smaller still—about "a thousand-million-million times smaller than atoms."[2]
Within the atom thousands or tens of thousands of these electrons are moving in orderly arrangement, at terrific speed, round and about one another. The amount of energy required to build up a molecule of any degree of complexity is very great, and it isby the breaking down of complex molecules into simple ones that all our mechanical work is done. And this is not all, for not only can the molecule be thus broken in pieces, but the atom itself is capable of disintegration. "Although we do not know how to break atoms up, they are liable every now and then themselves to explode, and so resolve themselves into simpler forms." "Atoms of matter are not the indestructible and immutable things they were once thought."[3] The idea of the amount of energy thus revealed as available for all kinds of active work is so vast as to baffle calculation and even imagination. It has been said that there is energy enough in fifteen grains of radium, if it could all be set free at once, to blow the whole British Navy a mile high into the air. The thought that we are thus encompassed on every side by pent up potentialities of force, which if uncontrolled might at any moment work our destruction, may well deepen in us the sense of the need, not only for an originating, but for a continually directing mind to superintend the conduct of the universe.
We have referred to more than one change of view to which the new discoveries have led. We shall doubtless find that there are other scientific theorieswhich will have ere long to be modified. Already it is recognised that the arguments of Lord Kelvin (he was then Sir William Thomson) and of Clerk Maxwell, which were based upon calculations as to the "dissipation of energy," can scarcely remain unaffected by what we now know, and suspect, of the crumbling and re-forming of atoms.
And there are hints abroad of even more revolutionary suggestions. If there has been one principle more imperatively and unanimously insisted upon than another, it has been the uniformity of Nature's laws. What then are we to make of a remark like the following, made by Professor J. J. Thomson, perhaps only half-seriously, to the British Association at Cambridge, in 1904? "There was one law," he said, "which he felt convinced nobody who had worked on this question"—the radio-activity of matter—"would ever suggest, and that was the constancy of Nature."
Not less startling is it to be told that a question may yet be raised which will challenge "the conception of a luminiferous aether, which for half a century has dominated physical science. It is possible," so we are informed, "that the field of electro-magnetic energy surrounding an electric charge in motion moves with it, and that the vibrations of light travel through this movingfield, instead of through an ocean of stagnant aether."[4]
One further quotation of singular interest may be added. It is taken from an address to students by the President of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy.[5]
"Twenty years ago," he said, "the idea held that inorganic chemistry was almost a dead science—dead in the sense of being apparently completed in many of its aspects, and that its records could be safely confided to the encyclopaedia.... A modified conception of life is now becoming co-extensive with the whole range of our experience. Even a simple inorganic crystal does not spring ready formed from its solvent, but first passes through phases of granulation and striation comparable with those which characterise the beginnings of vital growth. Metals exhibit in some respects phenomena similar to those possessed by organised beings. Thus, they show fatigue under long continued stress, and they recover their strength with rest. They are also susceptible to certain of the poisons which destroy organic life. Matter, broadly, is no longer merely dead masonry from which the edifice to shelter lifeis constructed, but also appears to be the reservoir of that energy which is developed, altered and drawn into vitality itself.... The indestructibility of matter bids fair to become relegated to the museum of outworn theories; and with it will probably go our present conceptions as to the conservation of energy."
It is clear, then, that the tasks awaiting the students of physical science are likely to be as arduous, and we may hope as full of reward, as they have been at any time in the past. Meanwhile, it does look as if there were truth in Mr. Balfour's remark that "Matter is not merely explained, but is explained away."[6]
[1] The weighing and measuring of the electron were first announced by Professor Thomson to the British Association meeting at Dover, in 1899.
[2] Sir Oliver Lodge.
[3] Sir Oliver Lodge.Life and Matter, p. 28.
[4] Whetham.The Foundations of Science, p. 50.
[5] H. L. Sulman, at the Sir John Cass Institute, November 29th, 1911.
[6] Presidential Address to British Association, 1904.
We have spoken of what science has recently been doing in the investigation of the constitution of matter; we have now to talk of its researches into the nature of Life.
The discovery that all plant and animal life is developed from living cells was made, as we have already stated, more than seventy years ago. Since then our knowledge of the formation and history of these cells has been continually growing. The size of cells varies, but as a rule they are very minute. They consist of what is termed protoplasm. At one time it was supposed that protoplasm was structureless. Now it is known that the protoplasmic cell contains a nucleus and a surrounding body. Moreover, the nucleus, or small spot in the centre, has within it a spiral structure of a very complicated kind. Every cell is derived from a pre-existing cell by a process of division, the two resulting cells being apparently identical with the parent cell.The cells possess the power of assimilating other cells or fragments of cells. As they grow they move and go in search of food and light and air and moisture. They exhibit feeling, and shrink as if in pain. Spots specially sensitive to vibrations become eyes and ears; and thus the various organs and faculties are evolved under the stimulating influence of environment. The progress, so far as it is physical, can be traced from the lowest blue-green algae right up to man. And all throughout, in so far as their chemical composition is concerned, the constituent elements of the living structure are the same. It is said to be practically impossible to distinguish between the cells of a toadstool and those of a human being.
But when all this has been explained, we have still left one great question unanswered. How is the protoplasm made? Is there any connexion of development to be traced whereby life can be shewn to have arisen from inorganic matter? Protoplasm, under analysis, is found to consist of some of the commonest elements on the earth's surface, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Apart from its very complicated structure, its contents are not hard to provide. And we know that there was a time when it must of necessity have been formed out of that which was not living,for there was a time when our globe was in a state of incandescent heat in which no life that we know could possibly have existed. More than this we cannot say. Sir William Thomson, as President of the British Association in 1871, suggested that a germ of life might have been wafted to our world on a meteorite; but to say that is obviously only to banish the problem to a greater distance.[1]
Huxley had, in 1868, invented the name "Bathybius" to describe the deep-sea slime which he held to be the progenitor of life on the planet. But later on he frankly confessed that his suggestion was fruitless, acknowledging that the present state of our knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living.
And so the problem remains. Sir Edward Schäfer, indeed, has laid it down that "we are compelled to believe that living matter must have owed its origin to causes similar in character to those which have been instrumental in producing all other forms of matter in the universe; in other words, toa process of gradual evolution,"[2] but he can throw no further light on the process and its stages.
Sir Oliver Lodge is but speaking the admitted truth when he says that "Science, in chagrin, has to confess that hitherto in this direction it has failed. It has not yet witnessed the origin of the smallest trace of life from dead matter."[3]
No doubt there are many who are hopeful that it may yet be possible to discover a way by which a cell, discharging all the essential functions of life, can be constructed out of inorganic material; or, at least, that it may be possible to frame an intelligible hypothesis as to how this might have been done under conditions which long ago may have been more favourable than our own. But, on the other hand, there are not a few who have quite deliberately abandoned any expectation of the kind. This was made plain by some of the expressions of adverse opinion which were elicited by Sir Edward Schäfer's address. Of these the following may be given as specimens: "The more they saw of the lower forms of life, the more remote seemed to become the possibility of conceiving how life arose."[4]
"He could not imagine anything happening in the laboratory, according to our present knowledge, which would bring us any nearer to life."[5]
"Living protoplasm has never been chemically produced. The assertion that life is due to chemical and mechanical processes alone is quite unjustified. Neither the probability of such an origin, nor even its possibility, has been supported by anything which can be termed scientific fact or logical reasoning."[6]
"The phenomena of life are of a character wholly different from those which are presented by matter viewed under any other aspect, mechanical, electrical, chemical, or what not. It is beside the question to point to the fact that in Nature 'new elements are making their appearance and old elements disappearing,' for though we may speculate as to the manner of formation of uranium and thorium, and though the production of radio-active matters in Nature at the present time and always seems to be a well-established fact, such phenomena have not even an analogy with those of a living being, however humble."[7]
It cannot be surprising that those who believethe door to be shut, so to speak, in the direction of any theory of development through mechanical and chemical agencies alone, should look elsewhere for the solution of a problem which science is bound to do its very utmost to solve. This is what, as a matter of fact, is happening; and it is of the very deepest interest to observe the nature of the suggested explanation. It is no other than a revived form of the ancient doctrine of a "vital force," which we had imagined to have been finally discarded. There is this difference, however, and it is all-important. The force is not, as formerly supposed, some unique kind of energy; is not, indeed, energy at all. But we shall do best to state the new doctrine in the words of its leading exponents.
Professor Anton Kerner, one of the most distinguished German writers on Botany, in hisNatural History of Plants, speaking of the chemical explanation, says: "It does not explain the purposeful sequence of different operations in the same protoplasm without any change in the external stimuli; the thorough use made of external advantages; the resistance to injurious influences; the avoidance or encompassing of insuperable obstacles; the punctuality with which all the functions are performed; the periodicity which occurs with the greatest regularity under constant conditions of environment;nor, above all, the fact that the power of discharging all the operations requisite for growth, nutrition, renovation and multiplication is liable to be lost."
And then he gives his opinion thus: "I do not hesitate again to designate as vital force this natural agency, not to be identified with any other, whose immediate instrument is the protoplasm, and whose peculiar effects we call life."
Sir Oliver Lodge is, perhaps, the most uncompromising advocate of the newer vitalism in England. The following striking quotations will set forth his views:
Life, he maintains, is no more a function of matter "than the wind is a function of the leaves which dance under its influence."[8]
"If it were true that vital energy turned into, or was anyhow convertible into, inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body had more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that 'these inorganic energies' always, or ever, 'reappear on the dissolution of life,' then, undoubtedly,cadit quaestio, life would immediately be proved to be a form of energy, and would enter into the scheme of physics. But, inasmuch as all this is untrue—the direct contrary of the truth—I maintain that life is not a form ofenergy, that it is not included in our present physical categories, that its explanation is still to seek."
"It appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence, which interacts with this material frame of things, and, while there, exerts guidance and control on the energy which already exists."[9]
"Life does not add to the stock of any human form of energy, nor does death affect the sum of energy in any known way."[10]
"Life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide its transmutations."[11]
"My contention then is—and in this contention I am practically speaking for my brother physicists—that whereas life or mind can neither generate energy nor directly exert force, yet it can cause matter to exercise force on matter, and so can exercise guidance and control; it can so prepare any scene of activity, by arranging the position of existing material, and timing the liberation of existing energy, as to produce results concordant with an idea or scheme or intention; it can, in short, 'aim' and 'fire.'"[12]
"It is impossible to explain all this fully by the laws of mechanics alone."[13]
"On a stagnant and inactive world life would bepowerless: it could only make dry bones stir in such a world if it were itself a form of energy. It is only potent where inorganic energy is mechanically 'available'—to use Lord Kelvin's term—that is to say, is either potentially or actually in process of transfer and transformation. In other words, life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide its transformation."[14]
"Life possesses the power of vitalising the complex material aggregates which exist on this planet, and of utilising their energies for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came."[15]
To these voices from Germany or England we can add that of M. Bergson from France. In many respects, as he says, he is at one with Sir Oliver Lodge. If he goes beyond him, it is mainly in these ways. He emphasises the element of Freedom, the power of choice as shewn by every living thing. It appears, he says, "from the top to the bottom of the animal scale," "although the lower we go, the more vaguely it is seen." "In very truth, I believe no living organism is absolutely without the faculty of performing actions and moving spontaneously; for we see that even in the vegetable world, wherethe organism is for the most part fixed to the ground, the faculty of motion is asleep rather than absent altogether. Sometimes it wakes up, just when it is likely to be useful."
And this is not all. What is specially characteristic of M. Bergson is the insistence that this power of choice is an evidence of Consciousness. "Life," he declares, "is nothing but consciousness using matter for its purposes." "There is behind life an impulse, an immense impulse to climb higher and higher, to run greater and greater risks in order to arrive at greater and greater efficiency." "Obviously there is a vital impulse."[16]
"Life appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from a centre, speeds outwards, and which on almost the whole of its circumference is stopped"—that is, as he explains, by matter—"and converted into oscillation; at one point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has poured freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere but in man consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has kept on its way. Man continues the vital movement indefinitely, although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in itself. On otherlines of evolution there have travelled other tendencies which life implied"—the reference is more especially to powers of instinct as distinguished from those of intelligence—"and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has doubtless kept something, but of which he has kept only a little."[17]
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about M. Bergson's philosophy is his unreadiness to allow that the consciousness, which he says is everywhere at work, has any deliberate purpose in its working. Mr. Balfour has called attention to the unsatisfactoriness of what he described as "too hesitating and uncertain a treatment."[18]
But, in spite of so serious an omission, we may be glad to believe, with our acute statesman-critic, that "there is permanent value in his theories." If they indicate at all the direction in which scientific thinking is to move, we shall soon have travelled a very long distance from the days in which it was imagined that all vital phenomena might be accounted for on merely materialistic and mechanical lines.
[1] "To this 'meteorite' theory the apparently fatal objection was raised that it would take some sixty million years for a meteorite to travel from the nearest stellar system to our earth, and it is inconceivable that any kind of life could be maintained during such a period."—Schäfer.
[2] Presidential Address to British Association, at Edinburgh (1912).
[3]Man and the Universe, p. 24.
[4] Prof. Wager.
[5] Dr. J. S. Haldane.
[6] Dr. A. R. Wallace. Article inEveryman, October 18th, 1912.
[7] Sir William Tilden. Letter toThe Times, September 9th,1912.
[8]Life and Matter, p. 106.
[9] Pp. 132, f.
[10] P. 158.