Parallel Paths: A Study in Biology, Ethics, and Art

by T. W. Rolleston

We have now got hold of a valid distinction between mechanical and directive agencies. We can distinguish them not by their nature but in relation to the particular phenomenon we are considering. We call them mechanical where that phenomenon is a by-product of the agency, and directive where, if the agency were conscious, we should say that this was its main intent. I can see no more fundamental distinction. It follows from this that the same action can be at once both mechanical (physico-chemical) and directive. The old distinction between vital and mechanical energy disappears. The question resolves itself simply into that of the number of distinct agencies which are deemed necessary to account for the universe.

Now the true way of dealing with this problem of the unity or multiplicity of agencies in nature is, I would suggest, to assume the existence of a single power which is of course psychic and directive but which can only be communicated to matter by degrees and under certain conditions still very obscure. These conditions it itself both creates and uses. Its development in Time and that of matter go on, as it were, on parallel paths, eternally apart (to our limited view) yet eternally inseparable. The key to the course of its development in nature lies in the word Synthesis.[115] Here we seem to have the explanation of the apparent difference between the so-called ‘vital’ and the physico-chemical forces. When matter has been so grouped as to form not a mere aggregate of particles but a synthesis, then that synthesis is enabled to make use of energy in a manner not open to its parts. Synthesis is a condition of the discovery of liberation of unsuspected forces. Thus a synthesis of molecules produces the stage for Life, a synthesis of living particles produces the Cell, a synthesis of cells produces an organism, a synthesis of organisms is a species—for the evidence (most notably that derived from the consideration of bee and ant communities) seems to show that material discontinuity in the members does not preclude the existence of a true synthetic union.[116] The characteristic power gained by a species is that of evolutionary development working in the obscure region of germinal combination and variation. Of course, I am aware that all this is merely a way of representing facts so as to make them intelligible to and manageable by the mind. If any one should object that we do not know what kind of grouping a synthesis is, except precisely through that very organic activity which I have described as its product or accompaniment, I entirely agree. All these terms are intellectual forms—like atoms, molecules, and other concepts of physics. They do not reveal anything; they merely help us to comprehend. In the region of the controversy of Vitalism versus Mechanism, the conceptions which I have been trying to explain enable us, without introducing a multiplicity of different energies, to understand how an organism synthetized by life may exhibit directive action which looks entirely different from any action possible in dead matter. Yet it works under laws of its own, and no doubt the particles of such an organism, if they were conscious, would be unaware that any but physico-chemical processes were in operation; in fact, I should have no hesitation in agreeing with the statement with which the great physiologist, Verworn, concludes an exhaustive analysis of this obscure subject: “The general fact must be regarded as established, that all the work of the organism is based finally upon chemical energy.”[117] But what directs the chemical energy? Something which is not itself a chemical energy and which is associated with the organic synthesis which that energy serves to maintain. Verworn’s statement, it must be borne in mind, is as true of the composition of the Iliad as it is of the digestive process of an animalcule.

The explanations above suggested are purely tentative; but so, it must be remembered, are the theories which they combat. No one pretends that the mechanical explanation of the universe, including the phenomena of organic life, is at present made out so as to cover the known facts, or even that expert opinion is at all unanimous in the belief that it can ever do so.

I know no single work in which the present position of the controversy is so well set forth as in Professor V. L. Kellogg’s Darwinism To-day.[118] A great array of scientific authorities will there be found mustered, and the verdict of Professor Kellogg (reluctantly given, for he clings to the mechanical explanation of the universe) is that evolution is not explained by any mechanical force at present known to science. “With Osborn,” he concludes, “let us join the believers in the unknown factors in evolution.”[119] He does not, however, contemplate their remaining unknown—we have to say Ignoramus, not Ignorabimus; and by ‘known’ he means apparently, reducible to a mechanical process. He will have nothing to say to any internal force directing the energies of matter, such as the Vervollkomnungsbewegung of Nägeli.[120]

“Such an assumption,” he writes, “of a mystic, essentially teleologic force, wholly independent of and dominating all the physico-chemical forces and influences that we do know, and the reactions and behaviour of living matter to their influences which we are beginning to recognize and understand with some clearness and fulness—such a surrender of all our hardly won actual scientific knowledge in favour of an unknown, unproved, mystic, vital force we are not prepared to make.”[121]

The above passage is very well fitted to be the pivot of the whole controversy. We shall examine it therefore in some detail.

It is, in the first place, hardly correct to say that the X factor in life and evolution is supposed by thinkers like Driesch, Reinke, and Nägeli to be ‘wholly independent of’ and to ‘dominate’ all the physico-chemical forces that we do scientifically know. Man, for example, cannot be said to be ‘wholly independent’ of the physico-chemical energies of which he makes use for a multitude of objects. He is very dependent, both on those outside him and those in his own organism. He cannot originate the smallest quantum of physical energy. Yet he is unquestionably capable of directive action upon matter.

In the second place it must be pointed out that the X factor, conceived as it is in this book, though Prof. Kellogg may call it ‘mystic’ if he likes, is certainly anything but ‘unknown.’ There is nothing more mystic than the human spirit—does not mysticism mean the attribution of spiritual significance to material things?—but there is nothing more real and certain. The very act of knowing, however material or mechanical may be the object of knowledge, is an act of the spirit, and we know the spirit itself better than anything else. How did this spirit come into active being? There are only two conceivable ways. Either it was at a certain moment projected into the universe from without by a Supreme Spirit, or it was, like everything else, evolved. If we accept the former view we may say good-bye to science. Miraculous interventions will explain anything, and if we admit them in one case they may be valid everywhere. But if we take the second view, as do practically all men of science, we are bound to admit that spirit had from the beginning some constant and natural relation to matter, for evolution does not work miracles—it cannot make something out of nothing. If, then, we regard Man not as an outside observer of the universe but as an organic part of it—and I believe no thinking about nature can be of any value until we have grasped and fully realized that position—then there can be nothing to surprise us if we find traces of a directive control in the elementary processes of life and development. It would be more surprising if we did not. If we reduce the whole universe, apart from the human spirit, to physico-chemical processes we are at once confronted with the problem of evolving the human spirit out of such processes; and that, on the face of it, is a sheer impossibility. All physical and all chemical phenomena as such are reducible to the movements and groupings of atoms and molecules. These movements and groupings can affect the spirit which finds itself mysteriously implicated in their activity, and the spirit can affect them. But that molecular movements can create spirit is unthinkable by any one who realizes what spirit is and what movement. Rather should we say that in the power of movement, in action, change of any kind, we are to see the evidences of spirit.