Professor Gray, in his address before the American Association for the advancement of science, delivered at Dubuque (Ia.) in 1872, while remarking upon the wide extent of similar flora in the same plant zones, says: "If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United States with Japan, Mantchooria and Northern China,--i.e.Eastern North America with Eastern North Asia--half the earth's circumference apart, we find an astonishing similarity." But why astonishing? Had our distinguished botanical professors, in this country and in Europe, thoroughly informed themselves as to the climatic conditions, the general physical features, geographical characteristics, soil-constituents, and other conditional incidences of this Asiatic region, in the light of all the physiological facts before them, the circumstance of this great similarity of flora would have been anything but astonishing. Indeed, the astonishment, if any, would have been expressed at the want of similarity, had it been found to exist.
Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to, and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not of all the mountain systems of the globe.
These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to "coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole. Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.
When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and far-distant alpine homes? They can never, of course, get very far away from the regions skirted by eternal frost, for their cup of joy must be chaliced by the snow-flake, or their beautiful life is soon ended. But if all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and explain. Not that we want any explanation, but that their theory of plant-migration stands sadly in need of one.
The theory which the Bible genesis suggests to us is fully adequate to the explanation wanted. It explains not onlywhythese alpine flora appear where they do, but why they cannot appear anywhere else. It also explains all the physiological facts to which we have referred in the foregoing chapters. Wherever the necessary alpine conditions exist the earth responds to the divine command, and the beautiful little alpine harebell is cradled into life, and rejoices in the bright embroidery it wears. And so, wherever streams are turned aside to flow through new meads and sheltered woods, or over broken and swaly places where cowslips never grew before, hardly a year will pass before this "wan flower" will hang therein "its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the black alder will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far its current may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the supply of natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate her as "instinct with music andthe vital spark."
If our botanical professors would come forth into the true light of nature, they should accept the position of pupil to her, and not assert that of teacher. So long as they continue to peep and botanize upon her grave, or over ancient mounds and Hadrianic tumuli, they will never find out the cunning of her processes, much less the means she employs to accomplish her perfected ends. This modern idolatry of "hypotheses," with our chronic neglect of what naturedoes, is the great scientific stumbling-block of the age in which we live. Our botanists all agree that certain plants and trees disappear--hopelessly die out--from theabsenceof "necessary conditions;" when will they come to recognize the reverse of this undeniable proposition, and agree that thepresenceof necessary conditions may cause the same plants and trees to make their appearance, that is, spring into life in obedience to some great primal law, as unerringly obeyed by nature as the attractive force of the universe itself?
For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As early as 1835, Mr. Hewett Watson, a well-known botanist of that day, in his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution; while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have given us maps without number to show how the vegetal hosts have traversed vast continents, swam multitudinous seas, braved the fiery equator, and scaled the summits of the loftiest Andes. In the mean time, no botanist of any distinguished note, except M. De Candolle, has confidently ventured to question this migration theory, so imposing and formidable has been the array of names which have frowned down, like so many gigantic ghauts, upon the audacious questioner.
But the present actual state of knowledge on this subject forbids us any longer to accept theories for facts, premises for conclusions, or fallacious reasoning for legitimate induction. Truth and daylight never meet in a corner, and no one, in our day, need go to the bottom of a well in search of either. We are forever stumbling over the truth without knowing it, because our old traditional beliefs, like so many superannuated grasshoppers, are constantly springing up in our path and diverting our attention from her. There are physiological facts enough daily obtruding themselves upon our attention, if we would but notice them, in the case of wayside plants, garden and household weeds, and the more aggressive vegetation of worn out pasture-lands, to satisfy us of the truth of our theory, were it not for the swarms of these old traditional grasshoppers continually rising into the air before us, and shutting out the truth as it is in nature. And the worst feature about this whole business is, that we have come to regard these multitudinous insects as a delight instead of a burden.
But it is hardly necessary to pursue this subject further. We have shown, or shall show in the succeeding pages, that all crystalline forms come from necessary or favoring statical conditions; that all infusorial forms come in the same way, only their conditions may be said to be dynamical rather than statical; that all mycological forms (fungi) are dependent, for their primary manifestation, on conditions of moisture and decay; that all plant-life, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer, is dependent on some similar incidence of conditions; that the mastodon, now only known by his fossil remains, must have wallowed forth from his "necessary mire" (plasmic conditions) in the Eocene period; and that all animal life must have come from some underlying law of primordial conditions, as impressed upon matter, in harmony with the "Divine Intendment" from the beginning; and that this law is still operative in the production of new forms of life whenever and wherever the same may appear. We shall also show that all living organisms, such as seeds, fungus-spores, morphological cells, etc., perish at a temperature of about 100° C., and thatBacteria, Torulæ, and other infusorial forms, making their appearance in super-heated flasks, originate not from morphological cells, plastide particles, bioplasts, or any other vital organism, but from indestructible vital units, which are everywhere present in the organic matter of our globe, and ready to burgeon forth into life whenever the necessary vital conditions exist, and the proper incidences of environment occur.
We have also shown that the earth still obeys the divine command to bring forth, or--if objection be made to this form of statement as unscientific--still obeys some inexorable underlying law tantamount to such command, and can no more help "bringing forth," when the necessary telluric conditions favor, than the cold can help coming out of the north, or the clouds dropping rain, when the necessary meteorological conditions occur. Give the future American botanist the physical geography of a country--its average rain-fall, temperature, etc., and the plant zone in which it lies, and, whether explored or unexplored, he will give us the general character of its vegetation, and name most of the plants and trees peculiar to its soil. And he will do this, not because he has any faith in the present theories of plant-migration, nor in the necessary distribution of seeds, but because he will study his favorite science with reference to latitude, elevation, climate, physical characteristics, rain-fall, soil-constituents, and other influencing conditions of plant-life.
But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing, if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the evolutionists have been spinning for us.
Our geologic and paleontologic records are becoming richer in materials, more interesting in details, and more authentic in character, every year. We are turning back page after page of these lithographic records, only to find the domain of science widened and deepened in interest as we advance, or as our rocks are being excavated, our mountains tunneled, our vast mines explored, and the beds of our rivers and arms of seas thoroughfared and traversed by the iron rail. Meanwhile, science exhibits signs of becoming less devoted to new-fangled theories, more exacting in her demands upon her votaries, and more eager to extend the domain of facts as the only true basis on which to rest her claims for future recognition. She is less dogmatic to-day than she was a year ago, and is likely to become less so a year hence than now. And this is largely due to her methods of research and inquiry. She is now everywhere sending out her hardier and more enthusiastic sons into new fields of exploration, to return laden with ampler materials to build, and richer treasures to adorn, a temple worthy of her name. In the field of the fossilized fauna and flora, these treasures are of the highest value and interest, all indicating not only wide areas of distribution, but immense periods of time, in which species have existed without any greater changes in character than the necessary shadings into varieties would seem to require. For nature everywhere characterizes her methods of production and reproduction by a loving tendency to diversify and variously adorn her species, as if to express the infinite conceptions of that power above her, which "spake and it was done, which commanded and it was brought forth."
From the fossilized plants of Atanekerdluk--a flora rich in species and wonderfully preserved in type--and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period--one so remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may be measured by geologic periods. And these materials show that varieties of theSequoia, the tulip-tree, oaks, beeches, walnuts, firs, poplars, hazelnuts, etc., etc., all flourished in these sub-arctic regions during the far-distant period we have named. Many of them must have grown on the spot where their trunks are now to be found, as their roots remain undisturbed in the soil, as well as at a time when these regions enjoyed a warm or cold temperate climate. Many of these fossilized and carbonized forms are identical with the living species of to-day, conclusively showing that neither natural variation, nor any secondary causes, have worked out any changes capable of being scientifically expressed in genetic value.
There is also abundant evidence to show that many of the present tropical forms flourished in central and southern Europe as far back as the warm inter-glacial epoch in the Eocene period. And if these inter-glacial periods occurred at the lowest minimum limits of eccentricity in the earth's orbit, as calculated by Leverrier's formulæ, we can have no conception whatever of the length of time actually intervening the period named and our present era. Mr. Croll has given us the limits of highest glaciation covering the last three million years, and shows that there have been but two periods of superior eccentricity in that time, and can be only one in the next million years, with but two or three intervening maxima and minima that may, or may not have been, of any special value. It is true that he assigns importance to these maxima, as affecting possible glaciations, but there are other eminent astronomers and physicists who differ from him, and really attach little or no importance to these of any other intervening periods of eccentricity. If Mr. Croll is correct in his theory and estimates, we must separate these superior glacial epochs by an interval of not less than one million seven hundred thousand years; and nearly three of these periods must have intervened since some of the present tropical forms flourished in Europe. And if these forms have undergone no specific change in all this time, how many years will it require to work out evenoneof Mr. Darwin's many evolutional changes?
The kinship between some of these arctic and sub-arctic fossilized flora and the living forms of to-day, is so near that they cannot be distinguished by a single difference. This is true of some of the varieties of theSequoiafamily, the oaks, beeches, firs, hazelnuts, etc., while others are so nearly identical that it would be difficult to classify them as separate varieties. At all events, if they cannot be placed in the list of identical species, they cannot be ruled out of representative types. But why should our speculative botanists insist upon these "evolutional changes" in plant-life--these "derivative forms" of which they are constantly speaking? Paleontological botany has given us the very highest antiquity of species, and the most that can be claimed is that nature was just as prolific of diversified forms millions of years ago as now. Because we, by forcing nature into unnatural, if not repugnant, alliances, can produce
--"Streak'd gillyflowers,Which some call nature's bastards."
--"Streak'd gillyflowers,Which some call nature's bastards."
it is no evidence that she commits any such offence against herself. Her alliances are all loving ones. She indulges in no forced methods of propagation. If she produced theSequoia gigantea, or the great redwood tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous period, she has propagated it ever since according to her own loving methods, and it is idle to talk of theSequoia Langsdorfiias being the original ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of the sequoias. How much more rational the suggestion of Professor Agassiz that these trees--the entire family of sequoias--were quite as numerous in individual varieties at first as now, and that the fruit of the one can never bear the fruit of the other.
Again, take the still hardier and more numerous branches of theQuercusor oak family. M. De Candolle has expended a vast deal of ingenuity to show that the various members of this old and ancestrally-knotty family have all descended from two or three of the hardier varieties. He arrives at this conclusion from a geographical survey of what he would call the "whole field of distribution," and "the probable historical connection between these congeneric species." But science should deal with as few probabilities as possible, especially where experience furnishes no guide to certainty, and only the remotest clue to likelihood. We should never predicate probabilities except on some degree of actual evidence, or some likelihood of occurrence, falling within the limits, analogically or otherwise, of human observation and experience. In no other way can we determine whether an event is probable or not. But here we have not so much as a probable experience to guide us. Geographical distribution in the past is hardly a safe criterion to go by, because we can never be absolutely certain that we have the requisite data on which to form a determinate judgment. TheQuercus roburmay furnish the maximum test to-day, but a few concealed pockets of nature may bring some other variety of the congeneric species to the front to-morrow, requiring M. De Candolle to correct his classification. There are no less than twenty-eight varieties of this one species of oak, all of them conceded to be spontaneous in origin, and it has been on the earth quite as long as the more stately tribe of Sequoias. Besides, not more than one twenty-thousandth part of the earth's surface has been dug over to determine the extent to which any one of its varieties has flourished in the past.
Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other, M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens. These may show a large number of genetically-connected individuals, or those claimed to be so connected. And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity ofidea, or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of theindividuorum similiumin Jessieu's definition of species. But similarity must not be mistaken for absolute likeness, which nowhere exists in nature. Infinite diversity is the law, absolute identity the rarest possible exception. No two oak leaves, for instance, in a million will be found actually alike, although taken from the same tree, or trees of the same variety; and the same may be said of the segmentation and branching of their limbs, as well as the striatures of their corticated covering,Et sic de similibuseverywhere, and with respect to every thing. Nature is more solicitous of diversity and beauty, than of similarity and tameness of effect, in all her landscape pictures; and the Platonic conception that "contraries spring from contraries," may be only a supplementary truth to that ofde similibus. In the eye of the soul all objective existences are discerned in their logical order, or as consecutive thoughts of the Divine mind, as outspoken in the material universe. To insist upon cutting down these transcendental forms[20] into the smallest possible number of similar or identical forms, may be all well enough to accomplish scientific classification; but the productive power of nature can never be limited by these mental processes of our own.
The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in speaking of theQuercus roburand its probable origin, says that it is "traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores." By "far-distant shores," he undoubtedly means Northwest America, where its remotest descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia was just as probable, under favoring conditions--though occurring subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent--as that of the miniature forests of "samphire," or small saline plants, which spontaneously made their appearance about the salt-works of Syracuse, when conditions actually favored. The high antiquity of the oak makes no difference in respect to the principle of dispersion, since geographical conditions are what govern, and not the theoretical considerations of the speculative botanist.
Mr. A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they "have come into existence coincident both in time and place with preëxisting closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as individual localization is concerned. But it proves nothing in the way of original progeny, nor can we, by any actual data before us, satisfactorily determine, under this formula, which of the two closely-allied species preceded the other. If they came coincidently, both in time and place, their existence must have been concurrent, not separated by preëxistence. The formula may be true to this extent, that the conditions favoring the appearance of one species may have equally favored what we call a closely-allied species. But even in this case, the material sequence is lost, and we have nothing to express a relationship as from parent to progeny. For, however restricted as to localization, each species preserves its own characteristics, the similarities always being less than the dissimilarities. These, and other equally conclusive facts of observation, led Professor Agassiz to question any necessary genetic connection between the different species, or between even the same species, in widely-separated localities; his idea being precisely that advanced by us in connection with the Bible genesis, that localization depended on geographical conditions, not on the migration of plants or the dispersion of seeds.
The actual geographical distribution of species--any species--does not depend solely on lines of ancestry, however great their persistence of specific characters; nor on any principle of natural selection, nor on the possibility of fertile monstrosities, but on the simple incidence of conditions; and M. De Candolle, in his "Geographie Botanique," virtually concedes this, while treating of geographical considerations in connection with distribution. He in fact says, in so many words, that the actual distribution of species in the past "seems to have been a consequence of preceding conditions." [21] And he is forced to this conclusion by his virtual abandonment of plant-migration, and the alleged means of seed-distribution.
The question after all, says Professor Gray, is not "how plants and animals originated, but how they came to exist where they are, and what they are." On only one of these points--that of favoring conditions--can any satisfactory answer be given, except as we defer to the Bible genesis, which explains all. And the reason is, that we can never determine what forms are specific without tracing them back to their origin, and this is impossible. Orders, genera, species, etc., are only so many lines of thought on which we arrange our classifications, just as the parallel wires of an abacus, with their sliding balls, are the lines on which we make our mathematical computations. Agassiz would not allow that varieties existed in nature, except as man's agency effected them, that is, as they were brought about by artificial processes.
These artificial processes are quite numerous, and many of them have been practised from remote antiquity. But they seem to have no counterpart in nature, except as insects may contribute to modifications by the distribution of pollen. But all modifications of this character tend towards infertility, while few plants accept any fertilizing aid from other and different species. Any break in their hereditary tendencies, resulting in a metamorphosis that involves the integrity of their stamens and pistils, is stoutly resisted by nature. In considering the question of species, therefore, we should confine our observations to those produced by natural, not artificial, methods; to plants as propagated by the loving tendencies of nature, not by the arbitrary and exacting methods of man--those looking to his gratification only. All these fall into the category, of "nature's bastards," as Shakespeare happily defines them. In view of these considerations, and the new methods of classification, such as grouping genera into families or orders, and these into sub-orders, tribes, sub-tribes, etc., we can readily understand why the great Harvard Professor should have wholly eliminated community of descent from his idea of "species," or hesitated to regard varieties otherwise than as the result of man's agency.
Indeed, the whole question of species, as well as varieties, is likely to undergo material modifications in the future. On some points the botanists and zoologists differ widely already, many making likeness among individuals a secondary consideration, and genealogical succession the absolute test of species. Others, on the contrary, make resemblance the fundamental rule, and look upon habitual fecundity within hereditary limits as provisional, or answering to temporary needs only. These differences of opinion would seem to be the more tenaciously held as the question of new varieties presses for solution at the hands of nature, rather than by the agency of man. All these varieties tend less to new races than to cluster about type-centres, and can go no further than certain fixed limits of variation, beyond which all oscillations cease. But none of these questions touch the real marrow of the controversy as to origin, or aid us in determining the duration of species.
The presence of the two great families of trees--the sequoias and the oaks--as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million years, except that theSequoia giganteamay drop out, from the vandalism of man or the next glacial drift.
M. Ch. Martins, in his "Voyage Botanique én Norwege," says "that each species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has its own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the physiological functions of the plant are suspended, either in temporary hybernation or death. And so when the hygrometric gauge falls below the point of actual sustentation, the plant shrinks and dies; while, without the necessary conditions, it would never have made its appearance. There was nothing more imperative in the command for the earth to bring forth than the necessary conditions on which plant-life depended in the first instance, and still depends, as we have endeavored to show.
Dr. J.G. Cooper, in an interesting article prepared by him at the expense of the Smithsonian Institute, on the distribution of the forests and trees of North America, with notes and observations on the physical geography, climate, etc., of the country, after classifying, arranging, and tabulating the results of the various observations forwarded to that institution, indulges in the following general observations: "We have with a tropical summer a tropical variety of trees, but chiefly of northern forms. Again, with our arctic winters, we have a group of trees, which, though of tropical forms, are so adapted to the climate as to lose their leaves, like the northern forms, in winter. But, here, it must be distinctly understood, is no alterationproducedby climate. Trees are made for and notbyclimate, and they keep their characteristics throughout their whole range, which with some extends through a great variety of climate." The italics are the authors, and we suppose he means by "tropical" and "arctic," the sub-tropical and sub-arctic.
In making his general observations, he had before him large collections of the leaves, fruits, bark, and wood of trees from all parts of the United States, including portions of Mexico, the Canadas and Alaska, and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But one of the most important elements--in fact, themostimportant--is wanting in the tables before us, and that is, the elevation at which these thousands of specimens were obtained. So great an oversight as this should not have occurred, although it may not have been entirely Dr. Cooper's fault. He had his materials to work upon, and may have done the best that any one could with them. And yet it is just as important to know at whatelevationa particular tree grows in its own plant zone, as to know whether it comes from a sub-arctic or sub-tropical region.
But this was not the comment we designed to make. Dr. Cooper labors, with most professional botanists, under the delusion that all our plants and trees originated in some one "centre of creation," at some period or other in time and place, and have been steadily spreading themselves outward from that centre until they occupy their present areas of distribution. We have no objection to his clinging to this superannuated faith and belief, if he derives any pleasure in flushing up these "traditional grasshoppers." But we have a right to insist that he shall be logical. He wants it distinctly understood that trees are madefor, and notby, climate. Then his "centre of creation" should be everywhere, not a localized one. For he insists that no alteration can be produced by climate, but that the characteristics of each specific form are preserved throughout its entire range of distribution. But if these nomadic and migratory forms have wandered thus far from their centres of creation, it would seem that the trees had either adapted themselves to the climate, or the climate to the trees. But our Smithsonian systematizer will allow us neither horn of this dilemma. He insists that the trees were made for the climate, and that they have preserved their characteristic features during their entire ambulation upon the earth's surface.
With the change of a single monosyllabic predicate, this proposition is undoubtedly true. We have never heard that plants or trees were "made." They were ordered "to grow," or rather the earth was commanded to bring them forth, which is an equivalent induction. And the fact that they grow now, renders it absolutely certain that they grew at first, when "out of the ground made the Lord Godto grow" every plant of the field, and every tree that is pleasant to the sight. We accept this genesis for the want of a better. And if Dr. Cooper will add to his climatic conditions, the hygrometric and other conditions necessary for the development and growth of his plants and trees, we will agree with him to the fullest extent of his novel position--that trees neither adapt themselves to the climate, nor the climate to the trees; although it is true that trees modify climate quite as much as they are modified by it. The true physiological formula is undoubtedly this:--Trees make their appearanceinclimatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without material change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor.Whythey make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we assume a preëxisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation our subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth to bring them forth, afterhisspirit (the animating soul of life) had moved upon the face of the depths--the chaotic and formless mass of the earth in the beginning. Plato has uttered no profounder or more comprehensive truth than this, with all his conceptions of Deity and the perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled. Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human soul. Besides, we findit true in fact, since the earth is constantly teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law impressed upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.--
"If this faith fail,The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,And earth's base built on stubble."
"If this faith fail,The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,And earth's base built on stubble."
The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to determine. It furnishes no objectivedatumon which to predicate attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as the coordination of thevis vitaein nature, which is an undisguised form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such attributes as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of thought. It admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical proposition. To say of life that it is "a coördination of action," might be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one; otherwise, crystallization would fall under its category, which is manifestly an illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible explication, analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands absolutely alone and apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital principle, or process of action, which all physiologists agree, for the sake of convenience and uniformity of expression, in designating as apower, property, force, etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin the subtlest and profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have returned but one answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great primal source of all life in the universe.
Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases, borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "Jupiter est genitor," "Jupiter est quodcunque vivit," etc., which, although uninspired utterances, strike their roots deeply into theterra incognitaof consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted," he was as conclusively indulging in theargumentum in circuloas if he had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statementx-ythe antithesis ofx+y--one of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed in the formula.
To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the "potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a whimsical enough way of putting it.
According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it is idle to predicate thevis vitae. For the great bulk of our globe is made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems, than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.
The theory of "panspermism," originating with the Abbé Spallanzani in modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond the construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that the germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the earth, or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to bring forth."
Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything which exists is referable to thevis vitæ--to non-corporeal, yet extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible, ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely numerous--is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm: everything that is, or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own spontaneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a germ, the totality of things."
But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism" landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now. It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation in these directions.[22] Neither the lowest primordial cell, nor the least conceivable molecule, has yet been reached by the aid of the microscope, any more than the outermost circle of the heavens has been penetrated by the aid of the telescope. We must stop somewhere, and when we find a scientifically formulated statement which embraces all vital phenomena, and satisfactorily accounts for them all, whether it originally came from Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a matter of comparatively slight moment, so far as the scientific world is concerned. At least, it would seem so to us. But to talk of thede novoorigin of "living matter" as the result of the dynamic force of molecules--themselves concessively "dead matter"--is to indulge in quite as fanciful a speculation as the advocates of the panspermic hypothesis have ever ventured to suggest. Professor Bastian is forced to go back of his infusorial forms and fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from which he admits they are "evolved." But why evolved? Does not the principle of vitality lie back of the pellicle, as well as the fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he that the extremest verge of microscopic investigation has been attained, in what he is pleased to designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is a very potential word, and no one may yet know what boundless stores of absurd theory and metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![23] He admits that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can have nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin, that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in, or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution," for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree, lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of ancestry to be traced anywhere.
This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the Darwinianplexussquarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen and Tréviranus agree that the infusoria met with have never presented similar characters when they have been encountered in different infusions; nor have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different portions of it have beenexposed to the incidence of different conditions. The slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the materials employed, are invariably accompanied by the appearance of different organisms--these being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and unaccompanied by any of the familiar forms." Other writers of equal eminence in this field of investigation have not only observed the same characteristics, but encountered the same difficulties in classification, from the very great diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms. So great is this diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that little certainty or value can be attached to the classifications already made. Even Professor O.F. Müller, after he had convinced himself that he had discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a single genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut them all down to mere modifications of one and the same species.
We refer to these several statements of fact for the purpose of emphasizing the true genesis of life as supplemented by "the incidence of different conditions," on which all vital manifestations depend. The presence of the germinal principles of life in the earth is emphatically averred in the Bible genesis. And we have only to connect the doctrine of "conditional incidence" with this averment, to account for all the vital phenomena which so profoundly puzzle these gentlemen while prying into the mysteries of the ephemeromorphic world. Whatever may be the character of any infusion, or to whatever incidence of conditions it may be subjected, it will producesomeform of life; not because it contains this or that morphological cell, destructible at a temperature of 100° C--that to which it is experimentally subjected before microscopic examination,--but because every organic infusion, whether undergoing the required heat-test or not, contains vital units--those as indestructible by heat as by glacial drift--which burgeon forth into life whenever the proper conditions of environment obtain. The slightest variation, in either the quantity or quality of the material employed in the infusion, is, as these eminent microscopists agree, invariably accompanied by the appearance of different forms of life, just as the slightest change in soil-conditions, such as that produced by the presence of one species of tree with another in natural truffle-grounds, will result in the appearance of another and altogether different plant, as well as truffle tuber.
But the theory which the vitalists are more particularly called upon to combat is that to which the non-vitalists most rigidly adhere; and we refer to it, in this connection, that the reader may compare its complexity and involution of statement and idea with the extreme simplicity of the biblical genesis, as heretofore presented. We give it in the exact phraseology employed by Professor Bastian: "Living matter is formed by, or is the result of, certain combinations and rearrangements that take placein invisible colloidal molecules--a process which is essentially similar to the mode by which higher organisms are derived from lower in the pellicle of an organic infusion." This carefully-worded definition of life, or the origin of "living matter," presents a hypothetical mode of reasoning which is eminently characteristic of all materialists. In the stricter definitional sense of the word, there is no such thing as "living matter" or "dead matter," as we have before claimed. There are "living organisms" in multitudinous abundance--those resultingfrom, notin, thevis vitæ, or the elementary principle of life in nature--as there are also "dead organisms" in abundance. This materialistic definition of life, which is not so much as a generic one even, begins in an absurdity and ends in one. It is agreed that the "proligerous pellicle" of M. Pouchet, the "plastide particle" of Professor Bastian, the "monas" of O.F. Müller, the "bioplast" of Professor Beale, etc., are essentially one and the same thing, except in name. They are mere moving specks, or nearly spherical particles, which exhibit the first active movements in organic solutions. They vary in size from the one hundred-thousandth to the one twenty-thousandth of a second of an inch in diameter, and appear at first hardly more than moving specks of semi-translucent mucus. Indeed, Burdach calls them "primordial mucous layers." But they move, pulsate, swarm into colonies, and act as if they were guided, not by separate intelligence, but by some master-builder supervising the whole work of organic structure. This master-builder is the one "elementary unit of life," which directs the movements of all the plastide particles, constantly adding to their working force, from the first primordial mucous layer of the superstructure to the majestic dome of thought (in the case of man) which crowns the temple of God on earth.[24]
But this "pellicle" of Professor Bastian is not mere structureless matter, any more than the "bioplast" of Professor Beale. The fact that they move, pulsate, work in all directions, shows that they have the necessary organs with which to work. These organs may be invisible in the field of the microscope, but that is no proof that they do not exist. Organs are as essential for locomotion in a plastide particle as in a mastodon or megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter, we can never predicatevitalityof it, any more than we can predicateintellectuality. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents no greater incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter." These qualifying terms are applied to the known laws and forces of nature, not to insensate matter. To assert that life resultsfrom"certain combinations and rearrangements of matter," and notinthem, is utterly to confound cause and effect, or so incongruously mingle them together that no logical distinction between the two can exist as an object of perception. Without thevis vitæ, or some germinal principle of life, lying back of these "combinations and rearrangements of matter," and determining the movements of their constituent molecules, there could be no vital manifestation, any more than there could be a correlate of a force without the actual existence of the force itself. [25]
The materialists give the name of "protoplasm" to that primitive structureless mass of homogeneous matter in which the lowest living organisms make their appearance. They claim that this generic substance is endowed with the property or power of producing lifede novo, or, as Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living matter" which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but whether they die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and more potentially endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those following their diagnoses to determine. They further claim that the same law of vital manifestation obtains in organic solutions as in the structureless mass they call "protoplasm." Both are essentially endowed with the same potentiality of originating life independently of vital units, orde novo, as they more persistently phrase it. But why speak ofunfolding"new-born specks of living matter?" "To unfold" means to open the folds of something--to turn them back, get at the processes of theirinfoldment. It implies a pre-existing something, inwrapped as a germ in its environment. If not a germ, what is this pre-existing vital something which their language implies? Is our scientific technology so destitute of definitional accuracy that they cannot use half a dozen scientific terms without committing half that number of down-right scientific blunders? "New-born specks of living matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by sheer inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian, should trip in this definitional way.
"Living matter,"bornof what? Certainly not ofdeadmatter. Death quickens nothing into life, not even the autonomous moulds of the grave. It implies the absence of all vitality--a state or condition of matter in which all vital functions have been suspended, have utterly ceased, if, indeed, they ever existed. It behooves the materialists to use language with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter," whatever the phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken nothing. The pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is there any birth from unquickened matter. Animalsbearyoung, treesbearfruit, but forceproducesresults. What then quickens protoplasmic matter? Neither vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are to credit the materialists. They would scorn to postulate such a theory, or accept any such absurd remnant of the old vitalistic school. It is rather "molecular force"--a physical, not a vital unit--that gives us these "new-born specks of living matter." [26] This is what they would all assert at once, in their enthusiasm to enlighten us on a new terminology.
But "molecular force" fails to give us any additional enlightenment on the subject we are investigating. It is even less satisfactory than "atomic force," or "elementary force"--that which may be considered as inhering in the elementary particles from which both atoms and molecules are derived. And since both the ultimate atom and the ultimate molecule lie beyond microscopic reach, the assumption that vital phenomena are the result of either molecular force or atomic force, rests upon no other basis than that of imaginary hypothesis. To postulate any such theory of life, is going beyond the limits of experimental research and inquiry, and hence adopting an unscientific method. At what point the smallest living organism is launched into existence--started on its life-journey--no one is confident enough to assert. The materialist is just as dumb on this subject as the vitalist; and the only advantage he can have over his antagonist is to stand on this extreme verge of attenuated matter, and deny the existence of any force beyond it. The postulation by him of molecular force at this point, is virtually an abandonment of the whole controversy. He ceases to be a materialist the moment he passes the visible boundaries of matter, in search of anything like "undifferentiated sky-mist" beyond it.
All that we definitely know is that certain conditions of protoplasmic matter, of organic solutions, of soil-constituents, etc., produce certain forms of life; and, in the case of solutions, certain low forms of life: But whether the lower rise, by any insensible gradations, into the higher, more complex, and definitely expressed forms of life, is altogether unknown. That any such gradations can be traced from the lowest vital unit, in the alleged collocations of molecules, is not yet claimed. These primordial collocations, like the lowest living organisms, lie beyond the microscopic aids to vision, so that the ultimate genesis of life remains as much a mystery as ever--becomes, in fact, a mere speculative hypothesis. And when it comes to this sort of speculation, the materialist is just as much in the dark as the vitalist, and neither can have any advantage over the other, except as the one may adopt the analytic, and the other the synthetic method.
This is the materialistic argument covering thede novoorigin of living organisms:--There is no greater microscopical evidence, they assert, that these organisms come from pre-existing invisible germs or vital units, than that crystals are produced in a similar manner--that is, come from pre-existing invisible germs of crystals. But this is overlooking all generic distinction in respect to processes or modes of action. Crystals are inorganic matter whichform, do notgrow. They are mere symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are produced by some law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of their constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no beginning or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric solids, they remain permanently enduring forms--concessively inorganic, not functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of crystals," is using language that has no appreciable significance to us. Germs are embryonic, and imply a law of growth--a process of assimilation, not of mere aggregation.
But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still insist, between the preëxisting germs of crystals and plants--or the only difference essentially worth noticing--is that crystalline particles of matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing diversified forms and structural changes than the more highly favored vital particles, such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the plastide, etc. The one represents mere crystallizable matter, the other the more complex colloidal or albuminoid substance, or that capable of producing a much greater number of aggregates. The analogies, they concede, end here. But the difference is world-wide when we come to processes--the true experimental test in all classification. Crystallizable substancescrystallize--that is all. They pass into a fixed and immovable state, and mostly into one as enduring as adamant; while colloidal or albuminoid matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no fixed forms--only those that are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so marked a feature, in respect to all the primordial forms of life, that Professor Bastian gives them the more distinctive name of "ephemeromorphs," in place ofinfusoria. But all these primordial forms grow--develop into vital activity. Not so with a solitary crystal. Everywhere the statical unitforms, the dynamical unitgrows; the one aggregates, the other assimilates; the one solidifies, the other opens up into living tissue; the one rests in the embrace of eternal silence, the other breaks the adamantine doors, and makes nature resonant with praise.
Great stress is laid by the materialists on the changeability of certain microscopic forms, and the startling metamorphoses they apparently undergo in different infusions, especially those forms having developmental tendencies towards fungi and certain low forms of algæ. They attribute their different modes of branching, articulation, segmentation of filaments, etc., both to intrinsic tendencies and extrinsic causes, the latter depending, no doubt, in a great measure upon the chemical changes constantly taking place in their respective infusions. These intrinsic tendencies, they would have us believe, depend upon the dynamic force of molecules, rather than any vital unit, or even change in elementary conditions. But "Dynamism" simply implies that force inheres in, or appertains to, all material substance, without specifically designating either the quantity or quality of the inhering force. If these materialists, therefore, use the terms "dynamic force," in this connection, in the sense in which we use vital force, or in the sense in which they use "statical force" as applied to the formation of crystals, in contradistinction from "dynamical force" as applied to living organisms, we have no special objection to urge against this particular formula. It presents no such formidable antagonism as the vitalists would expect to encounter from them.
M. Dutrochet is approvingly quoted by Professor Bastian, as asserting that he could produce different genera of mouldiness (low mycological forms)at will, by simply employing different infusions. This is unquestionably true, with certain limitations. And the chief limitation is as tohis(M. Dutrochet's) will. He might "will," for instance, to plant one field with corn and another with potatoes, but if the husbandman he employed to do the planting should happen to plant the one crop where he had willed to plant the other, and corn should grow where potatoes were planted, andvice versa, then he might be said to have produced cornat will. And so of his infusions. No change in their conditions enabled him to produce one species, much less a genus, of mouldiness in preference to another, by any change in the infusions employed by him. The power which implants life in the mycological world, implants it in every other world, from that without beginning to that without end. And this implanted life is quite as complete in one form as another,--
"As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph that adores and burns."
"As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph that adores and burns."
All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the action of these uniform laws. He will find them operative everywhere, and if he studies them deeply enough, he will find that they are not so much the laws of nature as they are the laws of nature's God.
Professor Bastian thinks he has conclusive evidence that what he calls "new-born specks of living matter" are producedde novo, that is, independently of any conceivable germ or germinal principle of life implanted in nature. But he confounds this implanted principle of life with the living organism it produces. His morphological cells, as well as plastide particles, are among these living organisms, as is conclusively shown by his own experiments. These all perish in his super-heated flasks. But the vital principle that produced them--that which becomes germinal under the proper conditional incidences--he can no more destroy by experimentation than he can create a new world or annihilate the old one. His flask experiments, therefore, prove nothing; and all this talk aboutde novoproduction is the sheerest scientific delusion. For, were it possible to destroy every plant, tree, shrub, blade of grass, weed, seed, underground root, nut, and tuber to-day, the earth would teem with just as diversified a vegetation as ever to-morrow. A few trees, like the gigantic conifers of the Pacific slope, might not make their appearance again, and some plants might drop out of the local flora; but thePater omnipotens Ætherof Virgil, would descend into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth), and, great himself, mingle with her great body, in all the prodigality, profusion, and wealth of vegetation as before.[27]
But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks, they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat. Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is, that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs" primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions, and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only.
The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline argument of the materialists has its value.
The materialists should not too mincingly chop logic over the validity of their own reasoning. If they force upon us their conclusions respecting statical aggregates, or crystalline forms, let them accept the inductions that inevitably follow in the case of dynamical aggregates, or living organisms. Beggars of conditions should not be choosers of conditions, nor should they be al lowed to dodge equivalent judgments where the validity of one proposition manifestly rests upon that of another. If they insist upon the presence of a chemical unit, or, worse still, a crystalline "germ" or unit, in the case of statical aggregations, they are effectually estopped from denying the presence of vital units in dynamical aggregations. And if they further force upon us the conviction that the process of aggregation, when once determined, remains in the one case, eternally fixed and certain, they should not be permitted to turn round and insist that, in the other case, there is nothing fixed and certain, but all is variability, change, uncertainty of specific forms. If vital units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units, statical units, and morphological units, should fall into the same categories of judgment.
A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." This definition, when first formulated, was received by all the materialists of Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely perfect. All the phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a nest of them, fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to show that any other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into this prodigious formula of Mr. Spencer. The London "Times" tried its hand on it, but only in a playful way. It said: "All the world, or at least all living things, are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number of little boxes, one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of all contains the germ,"--the elementary principle of life. But this was hardly a legitimate characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of "continuous adjustment," nor are the internal relations of one box adjusted to the external relations of another. The definition is really that of a piece of working machinery--any working machinery--and was designed to cover Mr. Spencer's theory of "molecular machinery" as run by molecular force.
But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life," according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment of their internal to their external relations is continuous.