Life: Its True Genesis Part 2

12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.

13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.

And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there be can no matter without an existing _ego_, in some state of consciousness in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[2] On what, therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion, except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that "breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality.

All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quant.i.ty," as he once defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The "materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to a.s.sume the existence of either matter or motion, since both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical existence.

The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work, with his quant.i.tative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding G.o.d--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly syllogizes G.o.d out of the universe as he would a mythological demon infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however, that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause, which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents, remain as they are.

Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the _Hagiographa_, or "sacred writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle, as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates of the latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much neglected, and inaccurately translated pa.s.sage of this Genesis, a key that unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now waging between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no equally limited compa.s.s, in ancient or modern ma.n.u.script or published volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific value as in the first chapter of Genesis.

In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--

1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all s.p.a.ce, and hence "without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in s.p.a.ce.

2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important suggestive statement that "the spirit of G.o.d"--the great formative force of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define "gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused matter in s.p.a.ce--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the universe from "the spirit of G.o.d,"--that spirit which was breathed into man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis, and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.

3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that G.o.d set two great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.

4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been "guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of this most remarkable genesis.

5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature, either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"

and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called, would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.

Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."

6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing (except man) "after his kind."

But let us embrace, in the proper ant.i.thetical summary of statements, some of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and that of materialistic science:--

THE BIBLE GENESIS.

1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a G.o.d, or an Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as _perfect_ of its kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs,"

declared to be in themselves upon the earth.

3. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as causing to grow, out of the ground, every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the field "before it grew."

4. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as causing the waters of the earth to bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

5. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as causing the earth to bring forth every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in which they appear in geological distribution.

6. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as making man in his own image, after he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every other living creature.

7. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as breathing into man "the breath of life," and he became a "living soul,"

8. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as creating the earth for the abode of man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth.

9. The Bible genesis represents G.o.d as exercising a moral government over man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.

10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than the angels."

THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.

1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a G.o.d from the universe, by a.s.signing to natural causes all the diversified and myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an infinite duration of time to come.

2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less _imperfect_ of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some underlying law of variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual development from lower into higher organisms.

3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or, at best, only a sort of _tertium quid_ between matter and motion.

4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles, birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.

5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders, genera, or species.

6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms, until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.

7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known moral factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the social instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree only, not in kind.

8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the tiger, or they dominion over him.

9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of G.o.d"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has become endowed.

10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher than the apes!

And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical, devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.

But the most important of these ant.i.thetical statements, so far at least as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word _ZRA_, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis, from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his "Critica Sacra," first published in 1662:--"_Sparsit, asparsit, c.u.m aspersione fudit, diffudit_," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered, universally diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That the Hebrew word _ZRA_. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of a plant or tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree, from which "seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the earth.

The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the "_diversa diversorum viventium primordia_" of Dr. William Harvey, were originally implanted in the earth. This ill.u.s.trious physician and biologist, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught the doctrine expressed in his phrase "_omne vivum ex ovo_," but that of "primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself into a living organism.

The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or unit--or whether it originates _de novo_, as the materialists a.s.sert, from infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the basis of a.n.a.logical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the materialistic dogma, _nihil ex nihilo_, would necessitate a like induction wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues is manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.

The germ in the seed is capable of a.s.similating, by well-determined and thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds themselves.

At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only, but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix, or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these "primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the wise. To call the h.o.m.ogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of a tiger in an Indian jungle.

Teach us to know what nature _does_, not what she _is_; and whatever of "divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in the majestic "Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses, in the "myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic soul of a Sh.e.l.ley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired authors themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted their inspiration.

We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.

Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and, at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore, by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we will as devoutly wors.h.i.+p Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did the G.o.d Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive a.s.surance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"

ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this connection.

The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of domestic weeds, gra.s.ses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of our position, that the Bible Genesis contains _the true key to the mystery of life_. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[3] The emphatic statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below "specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.

And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein there is functional activity; while a state, or _status_, is an incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and its _status_--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity dependent on organization. To a.s.sume that this efficient cause is simply the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very important element in the problem--that of conditional environment. What this efficient cause _is_, is a question that awakens no responsive inquiry. It strikes its roots too deeply into the intuitions of consciousness for the soul to give back an intelligible reply. Certain it is that neither metaphysical speculation, nor scientific inquiry, will ever enable us to reach the roots of this question, or extract from them the first quant.i.tive essence of life itself.

We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real _animus_ of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the great central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural, spiritual, eternal--is "the gift of G.o.d." And this is the grand corner-stone of all religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the a.s.syrians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of farther India.

Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and most effective blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely a.s.sailed and overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the more imposing and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find, in none of the great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of scientific men, the slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject worthy of consideration at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre definitional place in the dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as "the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval mist," originally pervading the interplanetary s.p.a.ces.