Life and death

by A. Dastre

The willow’s shiver, soft and faint, sounds like a word.

The pine-tree utters mysterious moans.”

For primitive man, as for the poet of all times, everything is alive, and every sound is due to a being with feelings similar to our own. The sighing of the breeze, the moan of the wave upon the shore, the babbling of the brook, the roaring of the sea, and the pealing of the thunder are nothing less than sad, joyous, or angry living voices.

These impressions were embodied in ancient mythology, the graceful beauty of which does not conceal its inadequacy. Then they passed into philosophy and approached the realm of science. Thales believed that all bodies in nature were animate and living. Origen considered the stars as actual beings. Even Kepler himself attributed to the celestial bodies an internal principle of action, which, it may be said in passing, is contrary to the law of the inertia of matter, which has been wrongly ascribed to him instead of to Galileo. The terrestrial globe was, according to him, a huge animal, sensitive to astral influences, frightened at the approach of the other planets, and manifesting its terror by tempests, hurricanes, and earthquakes. The wonderful flux and reflux of the ocean was its breathing. The earth had its blood, its perspiration, its excretions; it also had its foods, among which was the sea water which it absorbs by numerous channels. It is only fair to add that at the end of his life Kepler retracted these vague dreams, ascribing them to the influence of J. C. Scaliger. He explained that by the soul of the celestial bodies he meant nothing more than their motive force.

§ 2. Opinion of the Philosophers.

Transition from Brute to Living Bodies.—The lowering of the barrier between brute bodies and living bodies began with those philosophers who introduced into the world the great principles of continuity and evolution.

The Principle of Continuity.—First and foremost we must mention Leibniz. According to the teaching of that illustrious philosopher, as interpreted by M. Fouillée, “there is no inorganic kingdom, only a great organic kingdom, of which mineral, vegetable, and animal forms are the various developments.... Continuity exists everywhere throughout the world; everywhere is life and organization. Nothing is dead; life is universal.” It follows that there is no interruption or break in the succession of natural phenomena; that everything is gradually developed; and finally, that the origin of the organic being must be sought in the inorganic. Life, properly so called, has not, in fact, always existed on the surface of the globe. It appeared at a certain geological epoch, in a purely inorganic medium, by reason of favourable conditions. The doctrine of continuity compels us, however, to admit that it pre-existed on the globe under some rudimentary form.

The modern philosophers who are imbued with these principles, MM. Fouillée, L. Bourdeau, and A. Sabatier, express themselves in similar language. “Dead matter and living matter are not two absolutely different entities, but represent two forms of the same matter, differing only in degree, sometimes but slightly.” When it is only a matter of degree, it cannot be held that these views are opposed. Inequalities must not be interpreted as contrary attributes, as when the untrained mind considers heat and cold as objective states, qualitatively opposed to each other.

Continuity by Transition.—The argument which leads us to remove the barrier between the two kingdoms, and to consider minerals as endowed with a sort of rudimentary life, is the same as that which compels us to admit that there is no fundamental difference between natural phenomena. There are transitions between what lives and what does not, between the animate being and the brute body. And in the same way there are transitions between what thinks and what does not think, between what is thought and what is not thought, between the conscious and the unconscious. This idea of insensible transition, of a continuous path between apparent antitheses, at first arouses an insuperable opposition in minds not prepared for it by a long comparison of facts. It is slowly realized, and finally is accepted by those who, in the world of things, follow the infinity of gradations presented by natural phenomena. The principle of continuity comes at last to constitute, as one may say, a mental habit. Thus the man of science may be led, like the philosopher, to entertain the idea of a rudimentary form of life animating matter. He may, like the philosopher, be guided by this idea; he may attribute a priori to brute matter all the really essential qualities of living beings. But this must be on the condition that, assuming these properties to be common, he must afterwards demonstrate them by means of observation and experiment. He must show that molecules and atoms, far from being inert and dead masses, are in reality active elements, endowed with a kind of inferior life, which is manifested by all the transformations observed in brute matter, by attractions and repulsions, by movements in response to external stimuli, by variations of state and of equilibrium; and finally, by the systematic methods according to which these elements group themselves, conforming to those definite types of structure by means of which they produce different species of chemical compounds.

Continuity by Summation.—The idea of summation leads by another path to the same result. It is another form of the principle of continuity. A sum total of effects, obscure and indistinct in themselves, produces a phenomenon appreciable, perceptible, and distinct, apparently, but not really, heterogeneous in its components. The manifestations of atomic or molecular activity thus become manifestations of vital activity.