Life: Its True Genesis

by Horatius Flaccus

Scrutinize my propositions closely, and see if I am guilty of misstating theirs. Their new theory is only a slight modification of an old one, or the old adage, omne vivum ex ovo--all life is from an egg. For they assert that every living thing primordially proceeds from an ovule in protoplasm, the essential part of the protoplasmic egg, so to speak, being this little ovum or cellule, from which have issued all possible organisms in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nor is this theory essentially confined to organic matter. A scientific coördination of its several known parts, or alleged functions, extends the operations of this infinitessimal whirligig to the plastic or uniformly diffused state of all matter, from which has been evolved, in an infinite duration of past time, not only life in its highest manifestations, but a universe so stupendously grand that no amount of human intelligence can grasp the first conception of it.

Mr. Emerson--our Ralph Waldo--virtually accepts this theory of development, substituting, however, a stomach for an ovule, and the reverse of the Darwinian proposition, in what he is pleased to call "the incessant opposition of nature to everything hurtful." It is not the "selection of the fittest" but the "rejection of the unfit," by which "a beneficent necessity (I use his language) is always bringing things right." "It is in the stomach of plants," he says, "that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe." "'Tis a long way," he admits, "from the gorilla to the gentleman--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summits of science, art, poetry."

Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena, in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth."

In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that, however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The heights of science are not to be scaled per saltum, except as degrees may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[[35]]

There are some fish-like animals, say our Darwinian systematizers, like the Lepidosirens and their congeners, with the characteristics of amphibians; and hence they infer that by successive deviations and improvements the lower order has risen into the higher. But out of what page in the volume of nature, in the countless leaves we have turned back, has the immediate congener dropped, that we are obliged to look for the relationship in thirty-fourth cousins? We might as well say that some of the Infusoria possess the same or similar characteristics, and predicate relationship between them and the amphibians; for giants sometimes spring from dwarfs and dwarfs from giants. At all events, our diagnoses must be freed from these intermediate breaks or failures in the chain of continuity, or the doctrine of descent must tumble with the imaginary foundations on which it is built. And bear in mind that the most enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty. But science, inflexible as she is, or ought to be, in her demands, admits of no assumptions, much less sanctions such exceptions and deviations as we constantly find in the Darwinian path of continuity. The eye of imagination can supply nothing to her vision. She is eagle-eyed, and soars into the bright empyrean--does not dive into quagmires and the slime of creation after truth.

But let us see how Mr. Darwin bridges one of the very first chasms he meets with in constructing his chain of generation. He goes back to the first link, or to what he calls primordial generation. Here the leap is from inorganic matter to the lowest form of organic life--from inanimate to animate dust. The chasm is immense, as all will agree. But he bridges it by falling back on his infinitessimal whirligig--his primum mobile--or on the motions of elements as yet inaccessible, except to the eye of imagination. For even Plato's monad, or ultimate atom, was not matter itself, being indivisible, but rather a formal unit or primary constituent of matter, which, like Mr. Darwin's whirligig in its unaggregated form, admits of neither a maximum nor a minimum of comprehension; but rests entirely on imaginary hypothesis. And we may here add that a system which begins in imaginary hypotheses and ends in them--as that of bridging the chasmal difference between a gorilla and a Plato--can be dignified into a science only by a still greater stretch of the imagination--that of bridging the difference between the Darwinian zero and his ninety degrees of development in a Darwin himself!

Bear in mind, as we proceed, that the function of an argument in philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of matter itself, whether animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic; and there is no other affirmative premise, expressing their agreement as extremes, that can possibly admit of an affirmative conclusion. The parts are so separated in thought that no metaphysical or ideal distinction exists to coordinate them in classification. We are simply forced back, in our attempt at classification, upon the intuitions of consciousness, where reason manifestly ceases to enforce its inductions.

And here the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these intuitions--the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied upon--if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as unreliable--then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual judgment, or lay the foundation of the slightest faith or belief in the world. To deny the primary perception of truth by intuition is as fatal to "Evolution" as to the sublimer teachings of the Bible Genesis.

But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary datum of consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged, furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of inspiration to reach it. And this inspiration, however it may be derived, necessarily becomes a part of our intuitions, since it addresses itself to the strongest possible cravings of the human soul, and is accepted as its inseparable companion and guest.

Shall we build our faith then on the Divine Word,--on the Word that was in the beginning with God, and, when incarnate, was God,--or on Mr. Darwin's little whirligig that originally set everything in motion, and has only to go on ad infinitum to whirl us out a God, as it has already whirled us out a Darwinian universe without one. For if this ovulistic whirligig has bridged the chasmal difference between protoplasm and man, since the transition from inorganic matter to organic life, the process has only to be indefinitely extended to bridge the chasm between man and Deity, or between finite and infinite intelligence. This gives us nature evolving a God, instead of the doctrine of the old Theogonies, of a God presiding from all eternity over nature; one "who laid the foundations of the earth that it should not be removed forever; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."