FOOTNOTES:
[1] From a work by E. Morselli: Cesare Lombroso and Scientific Philosophy.
[2] Musolino was a brigand, and Luccheni an anarchist and regicide.
[3] From a study by Prof. E. Troilo, Enrico Morselli as a Philosopher. In the volume by Morselli, Milan: Vallardi, 1906.
CHAPTER I
CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY
In order to understand the practical researches that must be conducted for anthropological purposes, it is necessary to have an adequate preparation in the science of biology. The interpretation of the data that have to be gathered according to technical procedure, demands a training; and this training will form our subject in the theoretic part of the present volume. The limits, however, not only of the book itself, but of pedagogic anthropology as well, preclude anything more than a simple general outline; but this can be supplemented by those other branches of study which are either collateral to it or constitute its necessary basis (i.e., general biology, human anatomy and physiology, hygiene of environment, general anthropology, etc.).
The Material Substratum of Life
The Synthetic Concept of the Individual in Biology
According to the materialistic theories of life, of which Haeckel is the most noted supporter, life was derived from a form of matter, protoplasm, which not only has a special chemical composition, but possesses further the property of a constant molecular movement of scission and redintegration; vital metabolism or interchange of matter, by which the molecules are constantly renewed at the expense of the environment.
It was Huxley who defined protoplasm as the physical basis of life; and, as a matter of fact, life does not exist without protoplasm.
But Schultze and Haeckel carried this doctrine further, to the point of maintaining that a minute particle of protoplasm was all that was needed to constitute life; and that such a particle could be formed naturally, whenever the surrounding conditions were favorable, like any other inorganic chemical substance; and in this way the materialists endeavoured, with great ingenuousness, to maintain the spontaneous origin of life. And when Haeckel thought that he had discovered the moneræ or living cells composed of a single particle of protoplasm, he held that these were the first species to have appeared on earth.
But the further researches of physiologists and the improvements in the technique of the microscope proved that protoplasm does not exist independently in nature; because living cells are always a combination of protoplasm and a nucleus. If the nucleus is extracted from a radiolarium, the latter mortifies, and the protoplasm also dies; if an amœba is severed in such a manner that one part contains nucleus and protoplasm and the other protoplasm alone, it will be found that the latter part mortifies and dies, while the first part continues to live. If an infusorium is divided in such a way that each of the separate sections contains a part of the nucleus and a part of the protoplasm, two living infusoria are developed similar to the original one. Experiments of this kind, to which Verworn has given high authority, serve to prove that life does not exist except in cells divisible into protoplasm and nucleus. Further discoveries confirm this theory, as for instance the presence of a nucleus in hemocytes or red blood corpuscles, which were formerly believed to be instances of anuclear cells; and the discovery of protoplasm in microbes, which had formerly been considered free nuclei.
Now, when we have an independent living cell, it represents an individual, which not only has, as a general feature, this primitive complexity of parts, but also certain special characteristics of form, of reaction to environment, etc., that mark the species to which this particular living creature belongs.
Accordingly, we cannot assert, without committing the error of confining ourselves to a generic detail, that life originates in protoplasm or in a combination divisible into protoplasm and nucleus; we should say that life originates in living individuals; since, aside from abstract speculation, there can be no other material substratum of life.
Such a doctrine is eminently synthetic, and opens the mind to new conceptions regarding the properties that characterise life.
Formerly when life was defined as a form of matter (protoplasm) subject to constant movement (metabolism), only a single general property had been stated; for that matter, even the stars consist of matter and movement; and, according to the modern theory of electrons, atoms are composed of little particles strongly charged with electricity and endowed with perennial motion. Accordingly, these are universal characteristics, and not peculiar to life; and metabolism may be regarded as a variation of such a property, which is provoked by, or at least associated with the phenomenon of life.
The properties which are really characteristic of life have been summed up by Laloy in two essential groups; final causes and limitations of mass, or, to use a term more appropriate to living organisms, limitations of form and size.
The term final causes refers to a series of phenomena that are met with only where there is life, and that tend toward a definite purpose or end. Living organisms take nutriment from their environment, to the end of assimilating it, that is, transforming it from an inert, indifferent substance into a substance that is a living part of themselves.
This phenomenon is undoubtedly one of the most characteristic. But there are still other forms of final cause, such for example as the transformation of the fertilised ovum into the fully developed individual, predetermined in its essential characteristics, such as form, dimensions, colour, activities, etc. There are ova that to all appearances are exactly alike; the human ovum itself is nothing more than a simple cell composed of protoplasm and nucleus, measuring only a tenth of a millimeter (= 1/250 inch); yet all these ovum cells produce living organisms of the utmost diversity; yet so definitely predetermined that, if we know to what species the ovum belongs, we are able to predict how many bones will compose the skeleton of the animal destined to develop from it, and whether this animal will fly or creep upon the ground, or rise to take a place among those who have made themselves the lords of the earth. Furthermore, knowing the phases of development, we may predetermine at what periods the successive transformations that lead step by step to the complete development of the individual will take place.
Another form of final cause is seen in the actions of living creatures, which reveal a self-consciousness; a consciousness that even in its most obscure forms guides them toward a destined end.
Thus, for example, even the infusoria that may be seen through a microscope in a drop of water, chasing hither and thither in great numbers, avoiding collision with one another, or contending over some particle of food, or rushing in a mass toward an unexpected ray of light, give us a keen impression of their possession of consciousness, a dim glimmering of self-will, which is the most elementary form of that phenomenon that manifests itself more and more clearly, from the metazoa upward, through the whole zoologic scale: the final cause of psychic action.
Again, in multicellular organisms there are certain continuous and so-called vital phenomena, which some physiologists attribute to cellular consciousness: for example, the leucocytes in the blood seem to obey a sort of glimmering consciousness when they rush to the encounter of any danger threatening the organism, and ingest microbes or other substances foreign to the blood; and it is also due to a phenomenon that cannot be explained by the physical laws of osmosis, that the erythrocytes or red blood corpuscles and the plasma in the blood never interchange sodium salts for those of potassium; and lastly the cells of each separate gland seem to select from the blood the special substances that are needed for the formation of their specific products: saliva, milk, the pancreatic juice, etc.
Still another manifestation of final cause is the tendency exhibited by each living individual to make a constant struggle for life, a struggle that depends upon a minimum expenditure of force for a maximum realisation of life, thanks to which life multiplies, invades its environment, adapts itself to it, and is transformed.
Another fundamental synthetic characteristic of life is the limitation of form and size that is a fixed and constant factor in the characteristics of each species; the body of the living individual cannot grow indefinitely.
Living creatures do not increase in quantity by the successive accumulation of matter, as is the case with inorganic bodies, but by reproduction, that is, the multiplication of individuals.
Through the phenomenon of reproduction, life has a share in the eternity of matter and of force, that is, in a universal phenomenon. But what distinguishes it is that the individual creatures produced by other living individuals form, each one of them, an indivisible element in which life manifests itself; and this element is morphologically fixed in the limits of its form and size.
The peculiarities which are attributed to the chemical action of protoplasm are of an analytic character, so far as they concern the fundamental characteristics of life. The constant interchange of matter, namely, metabolism, constitutes undoubtedly a phenomenon peculiar to living matter, protoplasm; but protoplasm does not exist apart from living organisms. And what constitutes its chief characteristic is that, when brought into contact with it, inert substances are assimilated, i.e., they become like it, or rather, are transformed into protoplasm; mineral salts such as the nitrates or nitrites of sodium and potassium are transformed in the case of plants into living plasma capable of germinating either into a rose bush or a plane tree or a palm, and inert organic substances such as bread or wine are transformed into human flesh and blood. So that the phenomenon of assimilation outweighs, as a characteristic of life, the molecular chemical action through which it is accomplished. Since metabolism does not occur in nature as a chemical phenomenon, and cannot be produced artificially, but is found only in the matter composing living organisms, it follows that life is the cause of this form of dynamic action, and not that this dynamic action is the cause of life.[4]
Even the latest theory, developed especially by Ludwig in Germany—that protoplasm contains a separate enzyme for each separate function appointed to a particular task—amounts to nothing more than an analysis of the living organism.