The crucial experiment, then, is to attempt the formation of similar structures or forms, apart from the living organism: but, however feasible the attempt may be in theory, we shall be prepared from the first to encounter difficulties, and to realise that, though the actions involved may be wholly within the range of chemistry and physics, yet the actual conditions of the case may be so complex, subtle and delicate, that only now and then, and in the simplest of cases, shall we find ourselves in a position to imitate them completely and successfully. Such an investigation is only part of that much wider field of enquiry through which Stephane Leduc and many other workers[413] have sought to produce, by synthetic means, forms similar to those of living things; but it is a well-defined and circumscribed part of that wider investigation. When by chemical or physical experiment we obtain configurations similar, for instance, to the phenomena of nuclear division, or conformations similar to a pattern of hexagonal cells, or a group of vesicles which resemble some particular tissue or cell-aggregate, we indeed prove what it is the main object of this book to illustrate, namely, that the physical forces are capable of producing particular organic forms. But it is by no means always that we can feel perfectly assured that the physical forces which we deal with in our experiment are identical with, and not merely analogous to, {416} the physical forces which, at work in nature, are bringing about the result which we have succeeded in imitating. In the present case, however, our enquiry is restricted and apparently simplified; we are seeking in the first instance to obtain by purely chemical means a purely chemical result, and there is little room for ambiguity in our interpretation of the experiment.
When we find ourselves investigating the forms assumed by chemical compounds under the peculiar circumstances of association with a living body, and when we find these forms to be characteristic or recognisable, and somehow different from those which, under other circumstances, the same substance is wont to assume, an analogy presents itself to our minds, captivating though perhaps somewhat remote, between this subject of ours and certain synthetic problems of the organic chemist. There is doubtless an essential difference, as well as a difference of scale, between the visible form of a spicule or concretion and the hypothetical form of an individual molecule; but molecular form is a very important concept; and the chemist has not only succeeded, since the days of Wöhler, in synthesising many substances which are characteristically associated with living matter, but his task has included the attempt to account for the molecular forms of certain “asymmetric” substances, glucose, malic acid and many more, as they occur in nature. These are bodies which, when artificially synthesised, have no optical activity, but which, as we actually find them in organisms, turn (when in solution) the plane of polarised light in one direction or the other; thus dextro-glucose and laevomalic acid are common products of plant metabolism; but dextromalic acid and laevo-glucose do not occur in nature at all. The optical activity of these bodies depends, as Pasteur shewed more than fifty years ago[414], upon the form, right-handed or left-handed, of their molecules, which molecular asymmetry further gives rise to a corresponding right or left-handedness (or enantiomorphism) in the crystalline aggregates. It is a distinct problem in organic or physiological chemistry, {417} and by no means without its interest for the morphologist, to discover how it is that nature, for each particular substance, habitually builds up, or at least selects, its molecules in a one-sided fashion, right-handed or left-handed as the case may be. It will serve us no better to assert that this phenomenon has its origin in “fortuity,” than to repeat the Abbé Galiani’s saying, “les dés de la nature sont pipés.”
The problem is not so closely related to our immediate subject that we need discuss it at length; but at the same time it has its clear relation to the general question of form in relation to vital phenomena, and moreover it has acquired interest as a theme of long-continued discussion and new importance from some comparatively recent discoveries.
According to Pasteur, there lay in the molecular asymmetry of the natural bodies and the symmetry of the artificial products, one of the most deep-seated differences between vital and non-vital phenomena: he went further, and declared that “this was perhaps the only well-marked line of demarcation that can at present [1860] be drawn between the chemistry of dead and of living matter.” Nearly forty years afterwards the same theme was pursued and elaborated by Japp in a celebrated lecture[415], and the distinction still has its weight, I believe, in the minds of many if not most chemists.
“We arrive at the conclusion,” said Professor Japp, “that the production of single asymmetric compounds, or their isolation from the mixture of their enantiomorphs, is, as Pasteur firmly held, the prerogative of life. Only the living organism, or the living intelligence with its conception of asymmetry, can produce this result. Only asymmetry can beget asymmetry.” In these last words (which, so far as the chemist and the biologist are concerned, we may acknowledge to be perfectly true[416]) lies the {418} crux of the difficulty; for they at once bid us enquire whether in nature, external to and antecedent to life, there be not some asymmetry to which we may refer the further propagation or “begetting” of the new asymmetries: or whether in default thereof, we be rigorously confined to the conclusion, from which Japp “saw no escape,” that “at the moment when life first arose, a directive force came into play,—a force of precisely the same character as that which enables the intelligent operator, by the exercise of his will, to select one crystallised enantiomorph and reject its asymmetric opposite[417].”
Observe that it is only the first beginnings of chemical asymmetry that we need to discover; for when asymmetry is once manifested, it is not disputed that it will continue “to beget asymmetry.” A plausible suggestion is now at hand, which if it be confirmed and extended will supply or at least sufficiently illustrate the kind of explanation which is required[418].
We know in the first place that in cases where ordinary non-polarised light acts upon a chemical substance, the amount of chemical action is proportionate to the amount of light absorbed. We know in the second place[419], in certain cases, that light circularly polarised is absorbed in different amounts by the right-handed or left-handed varieties, as the case may be, of an asymmetric substance. And thirdly, we know that a portion of the light which comes to us from the sun is already plane-polarised light, which becomes in part circularly polarised, by reflection (according to Jamin) at the surface of the sea, and then rotated in a particular direction under the influence of terrestrial magnetism. We only require to be assured that the relation between absorption of light and chemical activity will continue to hold good in the case of circularly polarised light; that is to say {419} that the formation of some new substance or other, under the influence of light so polarised, will proceed asymmetrically in consonance with the asymmetry of the light itself; or conversely, that the asymmetrically polarised light will tend to more rapid decomposition of those molecules by which it is chiefly absorbed. This latter proof is now said to be furnished by Byk[420], who asserts that certain tartrates become unsymmetrical under the continued influence of the asymmetric rays. Here then we seem to have an example, of a particular kind and in a particular instance, an example limited but yet crucial (if confirmed), of an asymmetric force, non-vital in its origin, which might conceivably be the starting-point of that asymmetry which is characteristic of so many organic products.
The mysteries of organic chemistry are great, and the differences between its processes or reactions as they are carried out in the organism and in the laboratory are many[421]. The actions, catalytic and other, which go on in the living cell are of extraordinary complexity. But the contention that they are different in kind from what we term ordinary chemical operations, or that in the production of single asymmetric compounds there is actually to be witnessed, as Pasteur maintained, a “prerogative of life,” would seem to be no longer safely tenable. And furthermore, it behoves us to remember that, even though failure continued to attend all artificial attempts to originate the asymmetric or optically active compounds which organic nature produces in abundance, this would only prove that a certain physical force, or mode of physical action, is at work among living things though unknown elsewhere. It is a mode of action which we can easily imagine, though the actual mechanism we cannot set agoing when we please. And it follows that such a difference between living matter and dead would carry us but a little way, for it would still be confined strictly to the physical or mechanical plane.
Our historic interest in the whole question is increased by the {420} fact, or the great probability, that “the tenacity with which Pasteur fought against the doctrine of spontaneous generation was not unconnected with his belief that chemical compounds of one-sided symmetry could not arise save under the influence of life[422].” But the question whether spontaneous generation be a fact or not does not depend upon theoretical considerations; our negative response is based, and is so far soundly based, on repeated failures to demonstrate its occurrence. Many a great law of physical science, not excepting gravitation itself, has no higher claim on our acceptance.