"Still trust that God is love indeed,
And love Creation's final law;
Though nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravin, shrieks against our creed."
We are brought finally to the question whether, in reality, there is any thing defective or any thing superfluous in the normal products of organic nature? or, in other words, whether the Author of nature has made any thing inadequate to its purpose, or which fulfills no purpose whatever? We venture to suggest that inductive science is not in possession either of the facts or the principles which are necessary to a correct judgment. To be competent to deal with this question, science should not only know all the purposes which may be fulfilled by a single organism, but also the ultimate purpose which is subserved by the wondrous play of all the means and relative ends which constitute the entire cosmos. Far be it from us to depreciate the achievements or dare to set limits to the possibilities of inductive science. But, assuredly, the most enthusiastic scientist will admit that, compared with the vastness and complexity of natural phenomena, human knowledge is exceedingly limited and very imperfect. As to the final purpose of creation—the ultimate end of the Creator in the existence of the universe—modern science does not even claim to have an opinion.[330] With no knowledge of the ultimate purpose of creation, with a limited acquaintance with the general plan of the universe, with an imperfect knowledge of the reasons and ends of individual existences, it seems little less than impertinence for science to sit in judgment on the works of God, and unceremoniously condemn this as defective and that as unnecessary. As Baden Powell observes, "How can we undertake to affirm, amid all the possibilities of things of which we confessedly know so little, that a thousand ends and purposes may not be answered, because we can trace none, or even imagine none, which seem to our short-sighted faculties to be answered."[331] In view of the fact that hitherto the belief in "purpose" or "final cause" has been the guiding light of science, and the further fact that science is every day making new discoveries as to the utility of existences and organs of which before we were ignorant, scientific men might learn a profitable lesson, and manifest less "audacity."[332] Meantime we shall be content with the assurances of Scripture that "the works of God are perfect," and that "He hath made nothing in vain."
We may now gather up the several threads of thought which run through this essay, and state our final conclusions:
1. Matter is the merely passive or statical condition for the action of force.[333] The most fundamental condition or characteristic of matter, "perhaps its only true indication, is inertia."[334] "All that we can affirm of it is that it is the recipient of impulse and of Energy."[335] All the attempts which have been made to reduce matter to a function or phenomenon of force have ended in failure. Motion necessarily implies a something which is moved by the action of force. Even that most wonderful and subtile of all "modes of motion"—light—necessarily implies an entity which is moved. "The magnetic rotation of the plane of polarized light, discovered by Faraday, implies an actual rotatory motion of something." "The seeing intellect," says Mr. Tyndall, "when properly focused, must realize this conception at last." Matter must consist of ultimate continuous atoms or molecules possessing inertia and capable of being moved in space. By virtue of its extension and inertia it can intercept force, transform force into energy, and transmit energy. The various forms of energy (heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc.) are transformations of force resulting directly or indirectly from the interception of force by inert matter, and "all the phenomena of material nature result from the action of force upon matter."[336] "Matter," says M. Claude Bernard, "does not generate the phenomena which it manifests. It is only the substratum, and does absolutely nothing but give to phenomena the conditions of its manifestation."[337]
2. Force is that which originates or tends to originate motion, or changes or tends to change the state of a body with regard to motion. It is not and can not be a property of matter. The doctrine that force is an attribute of matter is disproved by the fact of inertia. Inert matter can have no spontaneous power—it can not change its own state of motion or rest. Neither is motion capable per se of producing motion. It is a fundamental axiom of natural philosophy that motion can not be generated by motion itself, any more than by the negation of motion. Inertness and exertion, passivity and activity, are contradictory attributes, and can not be affirmed of the same subject. To say that matter is inert, and at the same time that it can exert force, is to violate the law of non-contradiction to the uttermost.
Force is an attribute of mind or spirit, and of mind or spirit alone. Spirit-force is the only force in the universe. It is a doctrine as old as the hills that mind is the first cause of motion. Νοῦς μὲν ἀρχὴν κινησέως.[338] It is a doctrine toward which all modern science tends with remarkable unanimity that all motion is the product of mind; and, though continued and transformed and transmitted through various means, it never commences except in a volition either of the Supreme Mind or of a created mind. "The deep-seated instincts of humanity and the profoundest researches of philosophy alike point to Mind as the one and only source of power."[339] "The conception of force as the originator of motion in matter, without bodily contact or the intervention of any intermedium, is essential to the right interpretation of physical phenomena;... its exertion makes itself manifest to our personal consciousness by the peculiar sensation of effort;... and it [force] affords a point of contact, a connecting link between the two great departments of being—between mind and matter—the one as its originator, the other as its recipient."[340]
3. All the forms of energy manifested in the universe are only transformations of the one omnipresent force issuing from the one fountain-head of power—the Divine Will. The final disclosure of modern science is the convertibility and homogeneity of all forms of physical energy—"a dynamical self-identification masked by transmigration." Of this wonderful transformation of energy many striking illustrations may be given; we select the following from the "Lecture Notes" of Dr. A. F. Mayer (p. 64): "The heat developed by the 'falling force' of a weight striking the terminals of a compound thermal battery (formed by pieces of iron and German-silver wire twisted together at alternate ends) caused a current of electricity through the wire which, being conducted through a helix, magnetized a needle (which then attracted iron particles), caused light to appear in a portion of the circuit formed of Wollaston's fine wire, decomposed iodide of potassium, and finally moved the needles of a galvanometer."[341] Here we have visible kinetic energy transformed into sensible heat, then absorbed heat converted into electricity, then electricity transformed into magnetism, also into light, and still further into the energy of chemical separation, while some portion of it returns to the form of visible energy of motion. Of course, some of the energy is dissipated in the form of radiance (radiant light and heat), but no energy is either created or destroyed. All the various forms of energy are thus reducible to unity; they are one force transformed by mechanical arrangements. "Electricity and magnetism, heat and light, muscular energy and chemical action, motion and mechanical work, are only different forms of one and the same power.... Moreover, chemical union of the elements of matter, the attraction of gravitation in all the bodies of the universe, are but varied forms of this universal motive force."[342] If it be asked, What is that one form of force which is to be taken as the type of all the rest? the explicit answer of the first scientists of the age is, "Force must be regarded as the direct expression of that mental state which we call Will. All force is of one type, and that type is mind."[343] This is conceded even by Herbert Spencer: "The force by which we ourselves produce changes, and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, is the final disclosure of analysis."[344] The whole conception is summed up in one comprehensive statement by Professor Norton, of Yale College: "I regard the primary force of repulsion as incessantly outstreaming in every direction from every ethereal atom (which is incessantly renewed), and as it spreads outward ever tending toward evanescence on each radiating line by the mere result of its own expansion—a perpetual stream of force flowing from the Infinite Source of all power, vanishing ultimately by diffusion in the infinite expanse of the universe. It breaks incessantly against the atoms of bodies, and so furnishes the secondary streams of force that maintain the constitution and determine the phenomena of the material universe."[345] Force, then, is the act of the immanent Deity, who puts forth unceasingly from every point in the realm of space his creative and sustaining power.
4. All the phenomena of molecular life (bioplasmic phenomena) are the result of the immediate presence and direct agency of God.[346]
This is the doctrine which must finally be accepted, whether vitality be regarded as a mode of energy—a transformation of chemico-physical forces—or as a distinct and special force. Dr. Carpenter has long held that the physical and vital forces are mutually convertible, but he regards both as the result of the direct action of the Deity. "Believing that all force which does not emanate from the will of created sentient beings directly and immediately proceeds from the will of the Omnipotent and Omnipresent Creator; and looking on the (what we are accustomed to call) physical forces as so many modi operandi of one and the same agency, the creative and sustaining will of the Deity, I do not feel the validity of the objections urged against the idea of the absolute metamorphosis or conversion of forces."[347] Inasmuch, however, as the advocates of this theory have failed to establish either a quantitative or a qualitative relation between the vital and physical forces, but, on the contrary, the most exact and careful biological researches show them to be inconvertible and antagonistic, we are constrained still to hold the doctrine maintained by Dr. Beale.
The ancient doctrine that "Life is the cause, and not the consequence of organization,"[348] still maintains its ground against all assaults. Harvey's famous maxim, Omne vivum ex ovo—as amended by Charles Robin, Omne vivum ex vivo—stands yet unrefuted; and, as Sir William Thomson remarked in his inaugural address before the British Association of Science, "This seems to me as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation. I confess to being deeply impressed by the evidence put before us by Professor Huxley, and I am ready to adopt it as an article of scientific faith—true through all space and all time—that life proceeds from life, and nothing but life."[349] Life has its origin in no secondary cause, but in the immediate presence and direct action of the Deity. God is the author and giver of Life—the constant sustainer of all vitality; "in Him we live and move and are."