Life: Its True Genesis

by Horatius Flaccus

30. : Here is a fact given us by Dr. F. Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.: In a peat meadow in that town, owned by him, which was at no time subject to overflow, a large quantity of peat had been removed at different intervals of time, when the excavations naturally filled with water. In these excavations there appeared not only the Cyprinidae in considerable numbers, but fresh water clams which grew to be as large as those in the most favored streams. They made their appearance the very first season after the peat was removed, and have flourished there ever since. In no other portions of the meadow were there any fish or clams ever noticed before, nor was there any other source of water-supply than the rain-falls in that locality.

31. : Professor Beale, in one of his very latest works says: "Of the chemical and physical forms of energy something is known, but of the relationship of the so called vital energy, nothing has been proved. We only know that the influence it exerts is altogether different from that which has been traced to physical and chemical energy."

32. : It is admitted, even in the case of Bacteria, whose movements are the most uniform, that they are sometimes so inert and languid as to show no movements at all; while, at other times, they exhibit mere Brownian movements or those no more nearly allied to "life" than the minute particles of carbon escaping from the flame of a kerosene lamp. And among the most distinguished microscopists, it is a question whether these infusorial forms, those exhibiting the most active oscillations, are really vegetal or animal in origin; in other words, whether they are Fungus-spores or Torula-cells, or whether they may not be some intermediate forms.

33. : The difficulty of assigning any definitional value to a "primordial germ" is due to the vagueness of idea attached to it in the popular mind, as well as to the diversified theories and speculations of the scientists concerning the origin of life. We can only define it as a "vital unit," as the chemist defines his smallest conceivable quantity--his "primary least"--of an element, as a "chemical unit."

34. : Let two comrades be shot at the same instant in battle, the one through the heart, and the other through the arm, shattering it badly. What is there to prevent the surgeon from taking a piece of bone out of the arm of the man shot through the heart and instantly killed, and using it to make good the arm of the man still living? Apparently nothing but that the dead man's bone will not knit. He may not have been dead five minutes, and Professor Beale's bioplasts might still be at work spinning matter and weaving tissue for the integrity of the displaced bone. Why will it not knit? Simply because the vital principle that differentiates matter is gone--can no longer act. If the integrity of the bone depended on the action of the molecules, and not on the vital principle, there is no reason why this experiment should not be a success. For the molecules are all there, and their action will not be disturbed for hours after the death of the man shot through the heart.

35. : It is safe to adhere to the Leibnitzian axiom, Natura non agit saltatim.

36. : One of the most cultured classes of Christian believers in our day, holds that "all life is from the Lord;" that "He is the fountain, and we only the streams thence." And this, they claim, is true of all life. To "take away our breath," therefore, is to cut off this stream perpetually flowing from its invisible source--the fountain of all Life. When scientific methods substitute for a first cause a mere resultant effect, all primary principles disappear in their intermediates.

37. : Professor Marsh, of Yale College, has predicted that the "missing link" will be found in Borneo--evidently not crediting Mr. Stanley's statement about its presence in the interior of Africa. But one "missing link" is hardly enough; there ought to be an extensive family of them to complete Mr. Darwin's plexus. From the lowest genetic form to the anthropoid ape is a distance which does not half cover the length of this plexus--the immense gap between the monkey and the man being decidedly the greater length of chain. And yet the first half of the chain is traversed by innumerable forms--millions of links, so to speak. How, then, is the greater length of the plexus to be covered by a single "missing link?" A long line of caudal ancestry must be dug up, therefore, in Borneo, and shipped to the Peabody Museum, before this tremendous stretch in the chain of animated nature is satisfactorily accounted for. Borneo must be exceedingly rich in osteologic remains, even to bridge the chasm between its own ourang-outangs and the Dyaks, or aboriginal inhabitants, of that island.

38. : This daring hypothesis of the materialists is so utterly repugnant to all our ideas of a perfected Cosmos, that we have no patience with those advancing it. It is, at best, speculation run mad, and is based on no other assumption than that of the inherent imperfectibility of the universe as it came from the hand of God, or from the dynamic play of molecules extending throughout vast geognostic epochs.

From a materialistic stand-point this assumption of imperfectibility inevitably runs into the reductio ad absurdum. For if, in the play of the material forces of the universe, an infinite duration of past time has effected nothing but mutually disturbing and re-adjusting movements and relations among cosmical bodies, then an infinite duration of time to come can effect nothing but similarly mutual adjustments and re-adjustments in respect to such bodies. With an infinity of time, space, matter and motion, everywhere presenting a unity of phenomena in the universe, "there can never be anything," according to the great Stagirite, "unconnected or out of place, as in a bad tragedy." Conservation must, therefore, be the rule, and desinence the impossible exception.