Death and resurrection from the point of view of the cell-theory

by Gustaf Björklund

Exactly the same reasons that prevent natural forces from building a steam engine, cause also their inability to produce an organism, and this in a much higher degree because the organism is in a still fuller sense a product of art. The organic building material, instead of being plates and ingots of iron, copper, lead, etc., consists of carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorin, potassium, sodium, magnesia, etc., or both metals and metalloids of which the former, on account of their negative, and the latter because of their positive qualities cannot exist in a free state. From the minerals found in nature these substances must be extracted for organic purposes. The elements are different, but otherwise we may verbally repeat in regard to organic substance what has been previously said about the steam engine.

It is the creation of organic matter by art that the materialists have neglected to take into account. Therefore they look upon the organism just as a new race, suddenly succeeding humanity, would view our steam engines. These machines would certainly appear very mysterious to the earth’s new inhabitants. But a growing civilization would undoubtedly discover that all the material used in the engine is taken from ores to be found in nature. If now somebody would draw the conclusion that these ores themselves had made the engine he would reason as do the materialists today in regard to the organism. The parallel does not halt in any respect, but it is sufficient in this connection to call attention only to one or two of the more important components of the organism.

Organic matter, or combustible substance, consists of carbon and hydrogen which in an organism are comparable to the iron in a steam engine. But nowhere in nature is free hydrogen or free inorganic carbon to be found. The carbon was burned to carbonic acid in earth’s first combustion, and similarly the hydrogen was burned to water long before the conditions for organic life existed on the earth.

From these original products of combustion, burnable organic matter is formed by decomposition of carbonic acid and water into their elements, carbon and hydrogen, and by their subsequent combination through feebler chemical forces into sugar, starch, etc., which substances through a new combustion are again turned into carbonic acid and water. The natural forces cannot spontaneously undertake these transformations that only take place because of artificial arrangements. The processes of nature go in the entirely opposite direction, as we have seen.

As a matter of fact, the reduction of carbonic acid and water is done through the direct assistance of living beings. From the sun they take their power. But how ineffective the sun would be, left to itself, is seen already by the fact that carbonic acid is disintegrated at a temperature of 1300° C. and water only at 1500°. Products of art must be resorted to, and we know that by lenses, burning mirrors, photographic cameras and the like the sun may be forced to accomplish results that otherwise would be impossible. Such artificial apparatus, then, must be the chlorophyll granules in the cells. More strikingly yet, these organs of the cell may be compared to our blast-furnaces, as it is just in the chlorophyll granules that the reduction of carbonic acid and water, according to science, takes place. If these artificial devices, invented and constructed by the lower living units that constitute the cell, did not exist, the sun might shine throughout eternity on water and carbonic acid without producing organic building material.

This material is and must be the product of art. If the forces of inorganic nature spontaneously produced sugar, starch, etc., these substances must have the same quality as our rocks, minerals, etc., of being products of combustion, which in such a supposed case, perhaps, would be made burnable if transformed into water and carbonic acid. We would obtain a creation turned upside down and analogous to a world where the bodies we now use as weights would remain unsupported at certain distances from our earth. If we were to use such a body as a weight in a clock, we would have to wind it down instead of up.

Because organic compounds are products of art, living beings find themselves obliged to direct the physical forces to destroy these compounds or restore them to their inorganic state more speedily than these forces would have done if left unaided. The processes of decay, performed by micro-organisms, are as necessary in the economy of life as the reverse processes. Otherwise the earth would soon be so covered by corpses that life must cease simply for lack of inorganic raw material. It is true that we might imagine living beings as adapting their organization to this condition and for some time directly utilizing the accumulated stores of organic matter; but such periodical interruptions and changes would disturb the continuity of life’s evolution. To avoid this, there is no way open to restore equilibrium except the one in which it is now done.

No effect, whatever its nature, can exist without cause; and further, every effect must have a sufficient cause. If, therefore, we have established that natural forces can no more produce organisms than steam engines, we have also proved that these things would never have come into existence if the organic forces had been left to themselves. Neither organisms nor engines would exist, because they have no cause in the material world. The products of art are due not only to other causes, but the relationship between cause and effect is also different with them from what it is with the products of nature. Every product of nature has its cause in a previous condition of matter. The cause goes before and the effect comes after in time. The connection between cause and effect is so intimate and complete with regard to natural products, that we may trace the series of occurrences backward and forward in time without other limitations than those imposed by a deficient knowledge of the qualities of matter. Such a connection between cause and effect has been termed mechanical causality, which reigns without exception in the material world.

Of entirely different kind and nature is the series of causes pertaining to the production of objects of art. In their capacity of purpose they are themselves the physical cause of all the work that precedes their birth. When the product of art is finally ready, the effect has then gone before the cause. Such a connection is called teleological causality in contradistinction to the mechanical one, where the cause always precedes the effect.

But although the product of art is the nearest cause of its own production, it is not the primary one; it is itself the result, not of a cause to be found in the material world, but of a foreign interference in the mechanical causality, and points therefore to a supernatural ground which, by a closer investigation, will be found identical with a living will. The will feels the want of other things than those which natural forces can spontaneously produce. Natural products act as incentives on the will, spur it to break through mechanical causality so that physical laws by a judicious guidance may be forced to produce artificial products that better satisfy the desires of the will. If natural laws could comprehend and judge these things, they would consider them all as miracles, whereas, from the point of view of the will, they are so much the more natural as they are exact expressions of the needs and desires of the will.