Other scientists have gone further than Büchner and believed themselves justified in extending Harvey’s law to cover not only the present time, but all times. And the problem as to the first organisms has been answered in various ways. Sir William Thomson believes that such might have come to the earth with some meteoric stone, possibly a moss-clad fragment, from another planet in the universe that had met with a cosmic catastrophe, and, further, he has even tried to show that this hypothesis does not involve any physical impossibility.
Opinions seem to be divided, then, as to the validity of Harvey’s law. This again indicates a deficiency in the law itself, and it is true that such a deficiency really exists. Harvey’s formula is not a law; it is, as yet, only an empirical hypothesis.
It is true that life presupposes life in all the cases we have been able to investigate. These cases are exceedingly numerous because on the disbelief in generatio spontanea rests a whole modern industry, the art of preserving, which in millions of cases daily verifies the hypothesis. But our experience, in spite of this, does not reach far. If we continue our observations, who can guarantee that we would not finally discover that Büchner, after all, was right, and one single case would suffice. The utmost we can attain by observation is a certain degree of probability, and if we undertook to prove Harvey’s hypothesis to be a law in this way, our experiments must be extended in infinitum.
In order to reach certainty only under present conditions, we must study the generation of every now living organism, animals, plants, bacteria and the like. If it were found then that all these beings have had parents it would still be impossible to draw absolutely sure conclusions in regard to previous generations. We should be obliged to extend our researches through antiquity and primeval ages. If then no gap was to be found in the series and we perhaps finally traced life back to the “moss-clad fragment” from another world, we would again face the question, how the beings on that planet, once in time, had come into existence? Perhaps there the elements and forces of nature were such as to create life spontaneously. This question, of course, could not be decided except through continued observations, which would be obliged to extend to every point of an infinite universe and back to the dawn of time. First, then, we should know that Harvey’s hypothesis was a law, valid without limitations in the past—but also only in the past—and valid with one single exception, namely, the very first organism, of which we presently shall speak. In regard to the law’s validity in the future, we should no doubt possess a knowledge that approached certainty, but it could not be called absolutely sure. Because, even granted that no living being hitherto was without parents, it is not logically impossible that sometime in the future, lifeless matter might undertake to create organisms. To obtain certainty we must continue our observations until the end of time.
CHAPTER V.
The Materialistic Demonstration of Generatio Spontanea.
This whole method is consequently unsatisfactory. With Harvey’s law proved in the empirical way, the only way hitherto tried, we are still unable to decide how the first organism came into existence, and this is probably after all the most important question. Because, as Büchner rightly points out: “If life has a supernatural beginning, it has also a supernatural subsequent existence.” Even if we were observing with our own eyes the creation of the first organism we would not be able to say whether it were the result of natural or supernatural forces. The moment our study commenced, the mystic act of creation would already have taken place, an act which lies beyond the boundaries of research, and which we never shall be able to penetrate, however minute or comprehensive our observations. An entirely different method is here necessary. Our endeavor must be to find the innermost cause of the whole series of generations evolving throughout the ages. In other words, we must derive Harvey’s law from the inner nature of matter itself, show that this matter has such qualities that it cannot, never could, and never will, be able to produce a single living being. Only then shall we have demonstrated that Harvey’s formula is a universal, natural law, and then it will be not only our right but our duty to draw its logical consequences.
Is it possible to show that matter possesses such qualities? In regard to the matter of which our earth is composed we are at least able to closely investigate its qualities. But our earth is only an insignificant point in the universe and we must search the entire cosmos. Is not this impossible? We answer that in many ways, especially through the spectral analysis, we already know that nature’s elements everywhere are the same and that they everywhere have the same qualities. If Harvey’s law can be deduced from the matter we are able to investigate, we have at the same time shown its validity for the whole of the universe without limitations as to time and space; because then we may apply in regard to organic substance Büchner’s true remark as to the products of nature in times past. “The natural forces,” he says, “that governed the universe formerly are the same as those whose results we now witness every day and moment. Earth’s past time is to our thought nothing but an unrolling of its present. The geologists, guided by their knowledge of nature and its present laws, have been able with increasing accuracy to trace back evolution to the most distant ages. Meanwhile it has been established that everywhere and during all time only those elements and forces have been active which surround us today. Nowhere has a point been found where research had to be thrown overboard and an interference of unknown forces substituted; and nowhere and never will this happen. Everywhere the same laws were in force and the same matter was found. Historical research has demonstrated that past and present are subject to the same evolution, rest on the same basis.” And different it could not be, reasons Büchner, since life knows no exceptions, does not shirk any inorganic forces, but is itself only the result of the activity of these forces.
To obtain a definite understanding of the origin of life it is therefore sufficient to examine the origin of organic matter in our days, and for such an analysis there is at least no lack of material. Wherever a tree or a grass blade grows or a seed sprouts there dead substance is transformed into living; wherever an animal or a plant is decaying, there organic matter is again turned into inorganic.