IV. THE ORIGIN OF ORGANISED LIFE.
#Organised life and feeling.#
There is a very original view concerning the origin of life advocated in this number of The Monist by Dr. George M. Gould in his article on "Immortality."[84] The problem of the origin of life (namely, of organised life) is so closely connected with the problem of the origin of feeling, that the one cannot be solved without solving the other. Feeling such as we are familiar with is an exclusive property of organised life and a few incidental remarks on Dr. Gould's proposition will therefore not be out of place.
[84] It cannot be denied that many ideas set forth by Dr. Gould in his presentation of the problem of immortality contain a deep truth. The brilliant and forcible language in which the author treats his subject is admirable. But the passages on the externality of life present a conception which stands in direct opposition to the views that have been editorially upheld in The Open Court as well as the Monist.
#Dr. Gould's dualism.#
In introducing here the views of Dr. Gould in a discussion with Professor Mach, I am fully aware of the great difference that obtains between the two. While Professor Mach's thought moves in an outspoken monistic direction, Dr. Gould presents a bold dualism, attributing to all life, to the lichen on the withered rock no less than to the human soul, an extramundane origin. Why should we not then rather adopt the more consistent theological supernaturalism which attributes to inorganic nature also an extramundane origin, thus to realise by a short cut a complete unitary world-conception?
Dr. Gould's proposition is contained in the following:
"Certain confused and confusion-breeding philosophers, in the interests of a theoretical monism or pantheism pretend to find, or to believe, that the organic is born out of the inorganic, that the physical world shows evidence of design, that life and mentality were implicate and latent in pre-existent matter. Yet they will accept the evidence against spontaneous generation derived from the fact that if you kill all organic life by intense heat and then exclude life from without you will never find life to arise. But it is plain that in the condensation of the dust of space into suns and planets, all organic life was killed in the hottest of all conceivable heat. But as the planets cool, life appears. It must have come from without, and must therefore be a universal self-existent power."
#What can externality of life mean?#
The idea that "life must have come from without" is not quite clear. Does Dr. Gould mean "from without our planetary system, out of other planetary systems"? If so, the same objection holds good: In other planetary systems also when they were in a nebular state "all organic[85] life was killed in the hottest of all conceivable heat." Shall we perhaps consider the cold interstellar regions as the place whence life does come? And if "from without" means "from without the whole universe," we should be driven back to the old supernaturalistic dualism which regards nature as dead and life as a foreign element that has been blown into the nostrils of material forms so as to animate them.
[85] Dr. Gould does not seem to make a distinction between "organic" and "organised." We should here prefer the expression "organised life." Carbon is an "organic substance" but not an "organised substance." A cell and its protoplasm, however, are "organised substance."
#A modern thinker on the externality of life.#
Dr. Gould proposes his theory of the external origin of life, with great confidence, in the name of modern science. Must we add that modern science is very far from sustaining his view? Professor Clifford touches the subject of spontaneous generation in his article "Virchow on the Teaching of Science." He says:
"Why do the experiments all 'go against' spontaneous generation? What the experiments really prove is that the coincidence which would form a Bacterium—already a definite structure reproducing its like—does not occur in a test-tube during the periods yet observed…. The experiments have nothing whatever to say to the production of enormously simpler forms, in the vast range of the ocean, during the ages of the earth's existence…. We know from physical reasons that the earth was once in a liquid state from excessive heat. Then there could have been no living matter upon it. Now there is. Consequently non-living matter has been turned into living matter somehow. We can only get out of spontaneous generation by the supposition made by Sir W. Thompson, in jest or earnest, that some piece of living matter came to the earth from outside, perhaps with a meteorite. I wish to treat all hypotheses with respect, and to have no preferences which are not entirely founded on reason; and yet whenever I contemplate this
simpler protoplasmic shape
Which came down in a fire-escape,
an internal monitor, of which I can give no rational account, invariably whispers 'Fiddlesticks!'"
#Difficulties of Dr. Gould's position.#
Suppose, however, Dr. Gould's assumption were accepted, suppose that life had come from without, matter were of itself lifeless, and life, the "self-existent power," had ensouled some dead organic substances so as to cause their organisation, would we be any wiser through this hypothesis? The assumption instead of diminishing the difficulties in the problem of life, would increase them. New questions arise: What must this "self-existent power" be conceived to be? Does it exist without a physical basis (to use Professor Huxley's phrase)? How does it differ from energy? Is not all power energy of some kind? And are not all kinds of energy interconvertible? Has this self-existent power the faculty of changing other energy into itself, into life, or is it only supposed to utilise it? In the latter case it would be a Ding an sich, not in but behind the functions of organisms; and in both cases it would form an exception to the law of the conservation of energy, for "the self-existent power of life" would be an ever-increasing power. One life-germ only may have come from spheres unknown into the universe, and by utilising the mechanical energy of the material world has animated at least our earth, and may animate in a similar way all the globes in the milky way. That life-germ, however,—if it was anything like a real life-germ, such as our naturalists know of,—must have consisted of organic substance. What a strange coincidence, that outside of the world also organic substances are found! Life-germs are not simple substance, but highly complex organisms. Accordingly, the question presents itself, How has this life-germ been formed? What conditions in another world radically different from ours have moulded it and combined its parts into this special life-germ so extraordinarily adaptable to our material universe? Or must we suppose that the first life-germ was formed out of the cosmic substance of our universe by a non-material spark of life, (whatever life may mean,) that had dropped in somehow into the material world from without?
If life is a self-existent power, why does it always appear dependent upon and vary with the organisation, which it is supposed to have formed? Why has life never been observed in its self-existence? So far as we have ever been able to observe life, it is matter organised and organising more matter. All the difficulties disappear if we say, Life does not produce organisation, it is organisation.
* * * * *
#Organisms nor aggregates of cells.#
Dr. Gould, in appealing to the latest scientific researches as proving "the dependence of all organisation upon life," especially mentions his friend Dr. Edmund Montgomery and also Professor Frommen's article "Zelle" (Eulenburg's "Realencyclopädie der gesammten Heilkunde," 1890). Now it is true, as Dr. Gould says, that "the body of animals is not an aggregate of cells." It is as little a mere aggregate of cells as a watch is a mere aggregate of metal, or as a hexagon a mere aggregate of lines. The body of animals is an organism; which means, it is an interacting whole of a special form built of irritable substance. A highly complex organism is not and cannot be considered as a compound of its diverse organs, but as a differentiation. Its unity is preserved in the differentiation, yet this unity does not exist outside of or apart from the differentiated parts.
#Disparity of life and matter.#
I fully assent to Professor Huxley's proposition, approvingly quoted by Dr. Gould, that "materialism is the most baseless of all dogmas." I also believe in the omne vivum ex vivo; but I do not consider it with Dr. Gould as an axiom, nor can I accept the consequence which Dr. Gould derives from it, "that life [viz. organised life] is more certain and enduring than matter, soul than sense." It is true that "matter and life" are "as far apart as heaven and earth." Farther indeed, for they are two abstractions of an entirely disparate character. No passage through spatial distance, be it ever so large, could bring both concepts together. They are and remain as different, as is for instance the idea expressed in a sentence from the ink with which it is written. Ideas contain no ink and ink contains no ideas. Yet this does not prove that ideas exist by themselves in a ghostlike abstractness apart not only from ink, but also from feeling brain-substance. Nor does the disparity of the terms life and matter prove the abstract or independent existence of life outside of matter.
If life for some such reasons as hold good only in so far as they refute the old-style materialism, could or should be considered as being some self-existent power having come into the world "to bite" at matter, we might also consider the hexagon as a something that came into the mathematical world from without. The hexagon cannot be explained as a mere aggregate of lines, accordingly hexagoneity must be a self-existent power; it must have come from without, utilising lines for its hexagonic existence.
Organised life must have originated from non-organised elements by organisation, and thus a new sphere is created which introduces new conditions. The laws of organised life are not purely mechanical laws, nor physical laws, nor chemical laws, but they are a peculiar kind of laws; just as different as chemical laws are from purely mechanical laws (the latter not including such phenomena as are generally called chemical affinity).
#Natural laws and monism.#
Natural laws are formulas describing facts as they take place under certain conditions. Accordingly if special conditions arise we shall have a special set of laws. Monism assumes that all the laws of nature agree among themselves; there is no contradiction among them possible. Yet there may be an infinite variety of applications. The processes of organised life are not mere mechanical processes. The abstractions which we comprise under our mechanical terms do not cover certain features of vital activity and cannot explain them. Physiology is not merely applied physics; it is a province of natural processes that has conditions of its own and the physiological conditions are different from physical conditions. This however does not overthrow monism. We believe none the less in the unity of all natural laws and trust that if the constitution of the cosmos were transparent in its minutest details to our inquiring mind, we should see the same law operating in all the different provinces; we should see in all instances a difference of conditions and consequent thereupon a difference of results that can be formulated in different natural laws, among which there is none contradictory to any other.