an internal monitor, of which I can give no rational account, invariably whispers 'Fiddlesticks!'"
#Difficulties of Dr. Gould's position.#
Suppose, however, Dr. Gould's assumption were accepted, suppose that life had come from without, matter were of itself lifeless, and life, the "self-existent power," had ensouled some dead organic substances so as to cause their organisation, would we be any wiser through this hypothesis? The assumption instead of diminishing the difficulties in the problem of life, would increase them. New questions arise: What must this "self-existent power" be conceived to be? Does it exist without a physical basis (to use Professor Huxley's phrase)? How does it differ from energy? Is not all power energy of some kind? And are not all kinds of energy interconvertible? Has this self-existent power the faculty of changing other energy into itself, into life, or is it only supposed to utilise it? In the latter case it would be a Ding an sich, not in but behind the functions of organisms; and in both cases it would form an exception to the law of the conservation of energy, for "the self-existent power of life" would be an ever-increasing power. One life-germ only may have come from spheres unknown into the universe, and by utilising the mechanical energy of the material world has animated at least our earth, and may animate in a similar way all the globes in the milky way. That life-germ, however,—if it was anything like a real life-germ, such as our naturalists know of,—must have consisted of organic substance. What a strange coincidence, that outside of the world also organic substances are found! Life-germs are not simple substance, but highly complex organisms. Accordingly, the question presents itself, How has this life-germ been formed? What conditions in another world radically different from ours have moulded it and combined its parts into this special life-germ so extraordinarily adaptable to our material universe? Or must we suppose that the first life-germ was formed out of the cosmic substance of our universe by a non-material spark of life, (whatever life may mean,) that had dropped in somehow into the material world from without?
If life is a self-existent power, why does it always appear dependent upon and vary with the organisation, which it is supposed to have formed? Why has life never been observed in its self-existence? So far as we have ever been able to observe life, it is matter organised and organising more matter. All the difficulties disappear if we say, Life does not produce organisation, it is organisation.
* * * * *
#Organisms nor aggregates of cells.#
Dr. Gould, in appealing to the latest scientific researches as proving "the dependence of all organisation upon life," especially mentions his friend Dr. Edmund Montgomery and also Professor Frommen's article "Zelle" (Eulenburg's "Realencyclopädie der gesammten Heilkunde," 1890). Now it is true, as Dr. Gould says, that "the body of animals is not an aggregate of cells." It is as little a mere aggregate of cells as a watch is a mere aggregate of metal, or as a hexagon a mere aggregate of lines. The body of animals is an organism; which means, it is an interacting whole of a special form built of irritable substance. A highly complex organism is not and cannot be considered as a compound of its diverse organs, but as a differentiation. Its unity is preserved in the differentiation, yet this unity does not exist outside of or apart from the differentiated parts.
#Disparity of life and matter.#
I fully assent to Professor Huxley's proposition, approvingly quoted by Dr. Gould, that "materialism is the most baseless of all dogmas." I also believe in the omne vivum ex vivo; but I do not consider it with Dr. Gould as an axiom, nor can I accept the consequence which Dr. Gould derives from it, "that life [viz. organised life] is more certain and enduring than matter, soul than sense." It is true that "matter and life" are "as far apart as heaven and earth." Farther indeed, for they are two abstractions of an entirely disparate character. No passage through spatial distance, be it ever so large, could bring both concepts together. They are and remain as different, as is for instance the idea expressed in a sentence from the ink with which it is written. Ideas contain no ink and ink contains no ideas. Yet this does not prove that ideas exist by themselves in a ghostlike abstractness apart not only from ink, but also from feeling brain-substance. Nor does the disparity of the terms life and matter prove the abstract or independent existence of life outside of matter.
If life for some such reasons as hold good only in so far as they refute the old-style materialism, could or should be considered as being some self-existent power having come into the world "to bite" at matter, we might also consider the hexagon as a something that came into the mathematical world from without. The hexagon cannot be explained as a mere aggregate of lines, accordingly hexagoneity must be a self-existent power; it must have come from without, utilising lines for its hexagonic existence.