Life: Its True Genesis

by Horatius Flaccus

Chapter VII.

What Is Life? Its Various Theories.

The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to determine. It furnishes no objective datum on which to predicate attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as the coordination of the vis vitae in nature, which is an undisguised form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such attributes as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of thought. It admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical proposition. To say of life that it is "a coördination of action," might be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one; otherwise, crystallization would fall under its category, which is manifestly an illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible explication, analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands absolutely alone and apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital principle, or process of action, which all physiologists agree, for the sake of convenience and uniformity of expression, in designating as a power, property, force, etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin the subtlest and profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have returned but one answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great primal source of all life in the universe.

Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases, borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "Jupiter est genitor," "Jupiter est quodcunque vivit," etc., which, although uninspired utterances, strike their roots deeply into the terra incognita of consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted," he was as conclusively indulging in the argumentum in circulo as if he had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement x-y the antithesis of x+y--one of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed in the formula.

To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the "potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a whimsical enough way of putting it.

According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it is idle to predicate the vis vitae. For the great bulk of our globe is made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems, than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.

The theory of "panspermism," originating with the Abbé Spallanzani in modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond the construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that the germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the earth, or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to bring forth."

Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything which exists is referable to the vis vitæ--to non-corporeal, yet extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible, ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely numerous--is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm: everything that is, or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own spontaneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a germ, the totality of things."

But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism" landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now. It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation in these directions.[[22]] Neither the lowest primordial cell, nor the least conceivable molecule, has yet been reached by the aid of the microscope, any more than the outermost circle of the heavens has been penetrated by the aid of the telescope. We must stop somewhere, and when we find a scientifically formulated statement which embraces all vital phenomena, and satisfactorily accounts for them all, whether it originally came from Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a matter of comparatively slight moment, so far as the scientific world is concerned. At least, it would seem so to us. But to talk of the de novo origin of "living matter" as the result of the dynamic force of molecules--themselves concessively "dead matter"--is to indulge in quite as fanciful a speculation as the advocates of the panspermic hypothesis have ever ventured to suggest. Professor Bastian is forced to go back of his infusorial forms and fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from which he admits they are "evolved." But why evolved? Does not the principle of vitality lie back of the pellicle, as well as the fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he that the extremest verge of microscopic investigation has been attained, in what he is pleased to designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is a very potential word, and no one may yet know what boundless stores of absurd theory and metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![[23]] He admits that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can have nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin, that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in, or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution," for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree, lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of ancestry to be traced anywhere.

This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the Darwinian plexus squarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen and Tréviranus agree that the infusoria met with have never presented similar characters when they have been encountered in different infusions; nor have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different portions of it have been exposed to the incidence of different conditions. The slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the materials employed, are invariably accompanied by the appearance of different organisms--these being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and unaccompanied by any of the familiar forms." Other writers of equal eminence in this field of investigation have not only observed the same characteristics, but encountered the same difficulties in classification, from the very great diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms. So great is this diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that little certainty or value can be attached to the classifications already made. Even Professor O.F. Müller, after he had convinced himself that he had discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a single genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut them all down to mere modifications of one and the same species.