| Geological Epoch | Sub-Division of G. E. | Petrographic Formation | Ascendant Form of Life | Thickness of Deposits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paleozoic | Laurentian | Archaic Igneous Rocks | Eozoon Canadense | 30,000 ft. |
| Cambrian or L. Silurian | Potsdam Sandstone | } Diatoms | 18,000 ft. | |
| Magnesian Limestone | ||||
| Trenton Limestone | ||||
| Upper Silurian | Niagara Limestone | } Lower Fishes | 22,000 ft. | |
| Medina Sandstone | ||||
| Saline Formations | ||||
| Lower Helderberg | ||||
| Oriskany Sandstone | ||||
| Devonian | Corniferous or Upper Helderberg Limestone, Hamilton, Portage and Chemung Shales | } Dipnoi | ||
| Carboniferous | Crinoidal Limestone | } Amphibia and Sagillaria | 42,000 ft. | |
| Lower Coal Measures | ||||
| Mill Stone Grit | ||||
| Upper Coal Measures | ||||
| Permian Sandstone | ||||
| Mesozoic | Triassic | Sandstones | Monotremes and Gymnosperms | |
| Jurassic | Wassatch Mountains | Marsupials | 15,000 ft. | |
| Cretaceous | Sandstone and Chalk | Placentals | ||
| Cenozoic | Tertiary—Eocene | Lowest Primates and Angiosperms | 3,000 ft. | |
| Miocene | Simiæ | |||
| Pliocene | Catarrhinæ | |||
| Quaternary—Glacial | ||||
| Champlain | ||||
| Recent |
[CHAPTER III]
The Physical Limitations of Existence
The tremendous strides made in the sciences of biology, histology, physiology, and psychology in the latter part of the last century, in connection with the development of the science of organic chemistry, have done much to unravel the life-mystery from a physical point of view. One by one the determining characteristics of the mentality of the genus homo have dwindled down until to-day even reason in its broadest sense is granted by the most conservative to some of the vegetable forms of life, and any unbiased mind will have hard work to determine the difference between the so-called “Brownian” movement of particles of gamboge when macerated in a little water, or even of bits of camphor when dropped upon the surface of water, and the movements of the particles of a protoplasmic mass; although one is caused by temperature changes, and the other by chemism. The selectative growth of a vertex of a crystal in a saturated solution, and the claw of a crab, both of which have previously suffered the loss of their respective parts, are perhaps not so different as the words “organic” or “inorganic” would lead us to believe when applied as a classification to their principals. We know that in the life-process, as everywhere else, the law of substance and the law of the conservation of energy are held inviolate, and the theory which treats of life as a characteristic entity apart from the condition which makes it possible, is certainly false. The matter which composes the living body is chemically the same as that which we find everywhere. The fact that some living bodies have the power to form protoplasm out of its chemical elements or simple combinations of them, or only assimilate such protoplasm after it has been formed from inorganic matter, constitutes, in the broadest sense, the difference between the vegetable and the animal life, as we now know it. But, whether living or dead, the protoplasm has about the same composition, and, therefore, it must be that life per se is in reality only the manifestation of a form of motion. Science, by deduction, teaches us to look upon the living body very much as a theoretically perfect motor-generator set, the line terminals of the dynamo being the feed wires of the motor. Such a machine, standing still, would be “dead” in all senses of the word, although, potentially, its integrity would be the same as when in operation. But, once put in motion, this machine would directly come up to speed, and maintain itself at its normal rate of rotation until something interfered with it, or set up resistance within its circuit. From this time on, its rate of rotation would diminish until it stopped. If its integrity were suddenly violated, this stop would come at once.
Fifty years ago, heat, light, and electricity were all talked of, and believed to be forces whose existence was in no way dependent upon matter. Since the investigations of Thomson and Helmholtz, there is no unbiased scientist who can for a minute think that the manifestation of any of these could possibly exist without material of some sort, such as in a general way we call matter. Even chemism, the most obscure of all physical forces, we know to be very closely allied to gravitative attraction, and to be so powerful since it operates through such short distances. In fact, if we adopt the only known feasible hypothesis to account for the formation of matter, we must, in the end, admit that motion, and not matter, is the most potent of all the primal causes which we can imagine to-day. If we could eliminate motion entirely from the universe, we do not know of a single characteristic which would be left, by which we could identify existence as we know it, certainly not even matter itself. Every investigation or experiment which has been made in the domain of the natural sciences has only amassed additional evidence to the tremendous amount already gathered; all going certainly to prove that at least the former two of the old three universally accepted postulates were false, viz.: the free moral agency of man, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a personal God, or a power outside of and superior to nature. The latter will in no wise interest us, inasmuch as experience has taught us that, in general as well as in particular, the universe is governed by law; all honor to Humboldt and Descartes for so clearly demonstrating this.
We are quite sure to-day that, roughly estimated, each pound of human flesh represents an amount of potential energy equal to about sixteen million foot-pounds, and that all of the life-processes are, in the last analysis, purely physical, and that they follow physical laws. Any exertion, either muscular or nervous, which we make, over and above that supplied by the energy in our assimilated food, will have to be taken from the stock as represented in the tissue,—consequently, continued work means hunger; if continued longer without food, it means exhaustion, and if continued longer without food and rest intervening, it means the deterioration of the tissues. The recent investigations of Matthews upon the manner of nerve action, and the fact that the same is due to substances known as reversible gelatines, as well as to the cause of the negative variation of nerves exposed to exciting stimuli, all show that these most complex of life’s processes are as purely physical, in the largest sense, as the most simple ones. The artificial fertilization of sterile eggs by the use of dilute solutions, whose actions might almost be called catalytic, still further emphasizes the fact that life’s processes, even in the embryo, are essentially physical. Take, for instance, the sterile egg of the sea-urchin; the two per cent. solution of potassium cyanide; the continued constant temperature for a definite time, and all of the other conditions which enter into the development of this crude protoplasmic mass, are all physical factors, regardless of the fact that the result is a living organism, where we would, according to our old ideas, certainly expect an undeveloped sterile egg, or a potentially dead body. As with this ovum, so with the vegetable protoplasmic mass in the germinal radical of a seed: if its development is once started, it must continue its natural course without interference, upon pain of speedy degeneration upon interruption, and, in this light, both the egg and the grain of seed are places where life can be started (or motion on a larger scale begun) rather than living things before their development began, or while they were lying in their dormant state.
The death-knell to the theory of the personal immortality of the human soul, as ordinarily enunciated, was rung in 1875 by the German biologist, Hertzig, when he succeeded in bringing the living ovum into the presence of the ciliated sperm-cells under the microscope, while in the field of a lens of sufficient power to enable him to see clearly what took place. It is sufficient for our purpose to state that the minute the spermatozoon had pierced the cell wall of the egg-cell, the new individual of that species came into existence, and had, potentially, all of the life-possibilities, or was, in fact, as much alive as it would have been if this had happened under conditions which would have been favorable to its further development. The fact that the fertilized egg-cell immediately forms a mucous sheath the moment that its nucleus coalesces with that of the spermatozoon to prevent the further entrance of other spermatozoa, has done much to give rise and impetus to the theory that each cell has a soul, and that when these two nuclei completely fuse together, the resulting cytula, or fertilized ovum or stem-cell, has a soul peculiarly its own; which is made up in much the same way as two corresponding magnetic fields which are blended when two magnets are brought within the territory of each other’s influence and unite to form a resultant field. That each of the sexual una-cells is distinguished by a form of sensation and motion of its own, and that this is true throughout the whole animal world, has given peculiar significance to these empirical facts of conception; as these will at once offer an explanation of the mysterious influence of heredity, such as was never possible heretofore. That each human individual has a beginning of existence with the coalescing of the nuclei of the parent cells, just as he has an end of existence with the violation of the integrity of his physical body, whether after the lapsing of one second or one century, must, to anyone who has observed biological phenomena like the above, be perfectly clear.
With the recent development of the science of embryology, there is no longer any ground upon which man can lay claim, in the largest sense, to free moral agency. Conditioned as he is, even before birth, by the influence of heredity, which science has now localized to the inner nucleus of the cytula, not only are his natural tastes and temperament quite largely determined for him, but often, in at least as large a sense, his mental and physical possibilities. It was our genial Dr. Holmes, who, some years ago, said, “If you would make a man, you must begin at least four generations before he is born,” and, as embryology has since proven, he spoke more truth than he thought. Any person possessing a normally trained observation cannot help but note in their aptitude, or in their manner of doing certain things, their debt to their ancestors. How seldom (we might say, never) do we find in our friends what we had pictured and hoped for, owing, perhaps more than anything else, to the baneful influence of heredity. Degenerate features, scrofula, epilepsy, melancholia, etc., are all practically in every case the gift of some progenitor. Tendencies to insanity and crime are clearly recognized to-day by the administrators of the law, in every civilized country, as possible a legacy as coin, real estate, or chattels were a few centuries ago.
Whatever influence can be ascribed to heredity, as a positive limitation to human existence, we know absolutely that in a much larger sense is man a victim of his environment, particularly during the period of his childhood and adolescence. Professor Loeb has shown that at least as large proportion (possibly one-half) of the influence of heredity may be eliminated by the artificial fertilization of the ovum of many species, but embryology tells us that it is beyond the possibilities of science to ever render impotent the adaptive tendency of the individual. With human beings, the importance of environment is much greater under a high state of civilization than in the condition of savagery or barbarism, since the possibilities of achievement are infinitely greater in the individual well-educated than in a condition of illiteracy. What would the mathematical genius of Newton or Leibnitz accomplish in developing the calculus, had they been born among the Patagonians or the bushmen of Australia? Would Napoleon’s military talent have availed him anything if he had been placed by birth among the cliff-dwellers of Arizona instead of the fomenting political corruption of overpopulated France? Even in a much more restricted sense, Austerlitz, Marengo, and Lodi could not have become noted as the stepping-stones toward his imperialism, had he not attended the military school at Brienne.
In the discussion of this question, of the freedom of the will, or the free moral agency of man, it seems almost preposterous that educated people still cling to a theory so at variance with all known facts. That all men are created free and equal is not only relatively but absolutely untrue in the largest sense, but that they are all entitled to, and have equal possibilities, so far as is within their power, is not only the meaning which the writer of the “Declaration” intended to convey, but is what every fair-minded man must necessarily accord to all of his fellow-men, even regardless of sex. In Jefferson’s time, the last clause could not have been inserted, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, at least in four of the States of this country, woman has been given her full property rights, and in one she has full and complete citizenship on an equal basis with man. It cannot be many years until culture and a sense of equity will have been so disseminated that, at least under democratic forms of government, woman will be given her full civil and political rights, and regarded, as she justly should be, as no longer a forced parasite of man, but as potentially his equal in every respect.