The Physical Basis of Mind / Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.

by George Henry Lewes

12. But while the distinction is thus radical, when we view the organism from the real—that is, from the synthetic point of view—we must also urge the validity of the analytical point of view, which seizes on the conditions here complicated in a special group, and declares these conditions to be severally recognizable equally in anorganisms and in organisms. All the fundamental properties of Matter are recognizable in organized Matter. The elementary substances and forces familiar to physicists and chemists are the materials of the biologist; nor has there been found a single organic substance, however special, that is not reducible to inorganic elements. We see, then, that organized Matter is only a special combination of that which in other combinations presents chemical and physical phenomena; and we are prepared to find Chemistry and Physics indispensable aids in our analysis of organic phenomena. Aids, but only aids; indispensable, but insufficient.

13. There is therefore an ambiguity in the common statement that organized matter is not ordinary matter. Indisputable in one sense, this is eminently disputable when it is interpreted as evidence of a peculiar Vital Force “wholly unallied with the primary energy of Motion.” If by “ordinary matter” be meant earths, crystals, gases, vapors, then assuredly organized matter is not ordinary. “Between the living state of matter and its non-living state,” says Dr. Beale, “there is an absolute and irreconcilable difference; so far from our being able to demonstrate that the non-living passes by gradations into or gradually assumes the scale or condition of the living, the transition is sudden and abrupt, and matter already in the living state may pass into the non-living condition in the same sudden and complete manner.”[3] The ambiguity here is sensible in the parallel case of the difference between crystallizable and coagulable matter, or between one crystal and another. If we can decompose the organic into the inorganic, this shows that the elements of the one are elements of the other; and if we are not yet able to recompose the inorganic elements into organic matter (not at least in its more complex forms), may this not be due to the fact that we are ignorant of the proximate synthesis, ignorant of the precise way in which the elements are combined? I may have every individual part of a machine before me, but unless I know the proper position of each, I cannot with the parts reconstruct the machine. Indeed the very common argument on which so much stress is laid in favor of some mysterious Principle as the source of organic phenomena, namely, that human skill is hopelessly baffled in the attempt to make organic substances, still more a living cell, is futile. Men can make machines, it is said, but not organisms, ergo organisms must have a spiritual origin. But the fact is that no man can make a machine, unless he take advantage of the immense traditions of our race, and apply the skill of millions who have worked and thought before him, slowly and tentatively discovering the necessary means of mechanical effect. The greatest thinker, or the deepest scholar, who did not place himself in the line of the tradition, and learn the principles of mechanism, and the properties of the materials, would be as incapable of making a watch, as the physiologist now is of making a cell. But the skill of man has already succeeded in making many organic substances, and will perhaps eventually succeed in making a cell, certainly will, if ever the special synthesis which binds the elements together should be discovered. Not that such a discovery would alter the position of Biology in relation to Chemistry. The making of albumen, nay, the construction of an organism in the laboratory, would not in the least affect the foundation of Biology, would not obliterate the radical difference between organisms and anorganisms. It is the speciality of organic phenomena which gives them a special place, although the speciality may only be due to a complication of general agencies.

VITAL FORCE.

14. A similar ambiguity to that of the phrase “ordinary matter” lies in the equally common phrase “Vital Force,” which is used to designate a special group of agencies, and is then made to designate an agent which has no kinship with the general group; that is to say, instead of being employed in its real signification—that which alone represents our knowledge—as the abstract statical expression of the complex conditions necessary to the manifestation of vital phenomena, or as the abstract dynamical expression of the phenomena themselves, it is employed as an expression of their unknown Cause, which, because unknown, is dissociated from the known conditions, and erected into a mysterious Principle, having no kinship with Matter. In the first sense the term is a shorthand symbol of what is known and inferred. The known conditions are the relations of an organism and its medium, the organism being the union of various substances all of which have their peculiar properties when isolated; properties that disappear in the union, and are replaced by others, which result from the combination—as the properties of chlorine and sodium all disappear in the sea-salt which results from their union; or as the properties of oxygen and the properties of hydrogen disappear and are replaced by the properties of water. When therefore Vital Force is said to be exalted or depressed, the phrase has rational interpretation in the alteration which has taken place in one or more of the conditions, internal and external: a change in the tissues, the plasma, or the environment, exalts or depresses the energy of the vital manifestations; and to suppose that this is effected through the agency of some extra-organic Principle is a purely gratuitous fiction.

15. That we are ignorant of one or more of the indispensable conditions symbolized in the abstract term Vitality or Vital Force, is no reason for quitting the secure though difficult path of Observation, and rushing into the facile but delusive path of Fiction, which proposes metempirical Agents (in the shape of Vital and Psychical Principles) to solve the problems of Life and Mind. We may employ the term Vital Force to label our observations, together with all that still remains unobserved; and we are bound to recognize the line which separates observation from inference, what is proved from what is inferred; but while marking the limits of the known, we are not to displace the known in favor of the unknown. It is said that because of our ignorance we must assume these causes of Life and Mind to be unallied with known material causes, and belonging to a different order of existences. This is to convert ignorance into a proof; and not only so, but to allow what we do not know to displace what we do know. The organicist is ready to admit that much has still to be discovered; the vitalist, taking his stand upon this unknown, denies that what has been discovered is really important, and declares that the real agent is wholly unallied to it. How can he know this?

He does not know it; he assumes it; and the chief evidence he adduces is that the ordinary laws of inorganic matter are incapable of explaining the phenomena of organized matter; and that physical and chemical forces are controlled by vital force. I accept both these positions, stripping them, however, of their ambiguities. The laws of ordinary matter are clearly incompetent in the case of matter which is not ordinary, but specialized in organisms; and when we come to treat of Materialism we shall see how unscientific have been the hypotheses which disregard the distinction. The question of control is too interesting and important to be passed over here.

VITAL FORCE CONTROLLING PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL FORCES.

16. The facts relied on by the vitalists are facts which every organicist will emphasize, though he will interpret them differently. When, for example, it is said that “Life resists the effect of mechanical friction,” and the proof adduced is the fact that the friction which will thin and wear away a dead body is actually the cause of the thickening of a living—the skin of a laborer’s hand being thickened by his labor; the explanation is not that Life, an extra-organic agent, “resists mechanical friction”—for the mechanical effect is not resisted (the skin is rubbed off the rower’s hand sooner than the wood is rubbed off the oar)—but that Life, i. e. organic activity repairs the waste of tissue.

17. Again, although many of the physical and chemical processes which invariably take place under the influences to which the substances are subjected out of the organism, will not take place at all, or will take place in different degrees, when the substances are in the organism, this is important as an argument against the notion of vital phenomena being deducible from physical and chemical laws, but is valueless as evidence in favor of an extra-organic agent. Let us glance at one or two striking examples.

18. No experimental inquirer can have failed to observe the often contradictory results which seemingly unimportant variations in the conditions bring about; no one can have failed to observe what are called chemical affinities wholly frustrated by vital conditions. Even the ordinary laws of Diffusion are not always followed in the organism. The Amœba, though semifluid, resists diffusion when alive; but when it dies it swells and bursts by osmosis. The exchange of gases does not take place in the tissues, precisely as in our retorts. The living muscle respires, that is, takes up oxygen and gives out carbonic acid, not on the principle of simple diffusion, but by two separable physiological processes. The carbonic acid is given out, even when there is no oxygen whatever present in the atmosphere, and its place may then be supplied by hydrogen; and this physiological process is so different from the physical process which goes on in the dead muscle (the result of putrefaction), that it has been proved by Ranke to go on when the temperature is so low that all putrefaction is arrested. The same experimenter finds[4] that whereas living nerve will take up, by imbibition, 10 per cent of potash salts, it will not take up 1 per cent of soda salts, presented in equal concentration; and he points to the general fact that the absorption of inorganic substances does not take place according to the simple laws of diffusion, but that living tissues have special laws, the nerve, for instance, having a greater affinity for neutral potash salts than for neutral soda salts. Let me add, by way of anticipating the probable argument that may urge this in favor of Vital Principle which is lightly credited with the prescience of final causes, that so far from this “elective affinity” of the tissues being intelligent and always favorable, Ranke’s experiments unequivocally show that it is more active towards destructive, poisonous substances, than towards the reparative, alimentary substances; which is indeed consistent with the familiar experience that poisons are more readily absorbed than foods, when both are brought to the tissues. Thus it is well known that of all the salts the sulphate of copper is that which plants most readily absorb—and it kills them. The special affinities disappear as the vitality disappears, and dying plants absorb all salts equally.