Roman Stoicism / being lectures on the history of the Stoic philosophy with special reference to its development within the Roman Empire

by Edward Vernon Arnold

Modern theories.

280. Modern biologists deal with this subject with the minuteness of detail of which the microscope is the instrument, and with the wealth of illustration which results from the incessant accumulation of ascertained facts. But they are perhaps open to the criticism that where they reach the borders of their own science, they are apt to introduce references to the sciences of chemistry and physics as explaining all difficulties, even in regions to which these sciences do not apply. The following account is taken from one of the most eminent of them:

‘Hertwig discovered that the one essential occurrence in impregnation is the coalescence of the two sexual cells and their nuclei. Of the millions of male spermatozoa which swarm round a female egg-cell, only one forces its way into its plasmic substance. The nuclei of the two cells are drawn together by a mysterious force which we conceive as a chemical sense-activity akin to smell, approach each other and melt into one. So there arises through the sensitiveness of the two sexual nuclei, as a result of erotic chemotropism, a new cell which unites the inherited capacities of both parents; the spermatozoon contributes the paternal, the egg-cell the maternal characteristics to the primary-cell, from which the child is developed[80].’

In another passage the same author sums up his results in bold language from which all qualifications and admissions of imperfect knowledge have disappeared:

‘Physiology has proved that all the phenomena of life may be reduced to chemical and physical processes. The cell-theory has shown us that all the complicated phenomena of the life of the higher plants and animals may be deduced from the simple physico-chemical processes in the elementary organism of the microscopic cells, and the material basis of them is the plasma of the cell-body[81].’

Their inadequacy.

281. These utterances may be considered typical of modern materialistic philosophy in its extreme form. We may nevertheless infer from the references to a ‘mysterious force,’ ‘chemical sense-activity akin to smell,’ and ‘erotic chemotropism,’ that the analogies to biological facts which the writer finds in chemical science stand in need of further elucidation. We may notice further that the ‘atom’ has entirely disappeared from the discussion, and that the ‘material basis’ of the facts is a ‘plasma’ or ‘plasmic substance,’ something in fact which stands related to a ‘protoplasm’ of which the chemical and physical sciences know nothing, but which distinctly resembles the ‘fiery creative body’ which is the foundation of the Stoic physics. Further we must notice that the old problem of ‘the one and the many’ reappears in this modern description; for the cell and its nucleus are neither exactly one nor exactly two, but something which passes from two to one and from one to two; further the nuclei of the two cells, being drawn together, coalesce, and from their union is developed a ‘new cell’ which unites the capacities of its ‘parents.’ Modern science, therefore, although it has apparently simplified the history of generation by reducing it to the combination of two units out of many millions that are incessantly being produced by parent organisms, has left the philosophical problem of the manner of their combination entirely unchanged. In these microscopic cells is latent the whole physical and spiritual inheritance of the parents, whether men, animals or plants, from which they are derived; just as the atoms of Epicurus possess the germ of free will[82], so the cells of Haeckel smell and love, struggle for marriage union, melt away in each other’s embrace, and lose their own individuality at the moment that a new being enters the universe.

Creation and procreation.

282. If then the phenomena of reproduction are essentially the same, whether we consider the relations of two human beings or those of infinitesimal elements which seem to belong to another order of being, we are already prepared for the Stoic principle that the creation of the universe is repeated in miniature in the bringing into life of each individual amongst the millions of millions of organic beings which people it. From this standpoint we gain fresh light upon the Stoic theory of creation, and particularly of the relation of the eternal Logos to the infinite multitude of procreative principles or ‘seed-powers.’ Again, it is with the general theory of creation in our minds that we must revert to the Stoic explanation of ordinary generation. This is to him no humble or unclean function of the members of the body; it is the whole man, in his divine and human nature, that is concerned[83]. The ‘procreative principle’ in each man is a part of his soul[84]; ‘the seed is a spirit’ (or pulsation) ‘extending from the principate to the parts of generation[85].’ It is an emanation from the individual in which one becomes two, and two become one. Just as the human soul is a ‘fragment’ of the divine, so is the seed a fragment torn away, as it were, from the souls of parents and ancestors[86].