Omphalos Part 15

The concurrence of these conditions in the skeleton, the nearly balanced ratio of the bloods, the perfected dent.i.tion, the beard, the deepened voice, the prominent larynx, and the stature, combine to point out, with infallible precision, the age of this Man, as between twenty-five and thirty years.

So far, then, we can with certainty trace back the history of this being, as an independent organism; but did his history then commence? O no; we can carry him much farther back than this. What means this curious depression in the centre of the abdomen, and the corrugated k.n.o.b which occupies the cavity?[89]

This is the NAVEL. The corrugation is the cicatrice left where once was attached the umbilical cord, and whence its remains, having died, sloughed away. This organ introduces us to the foetal life of Man; for it was the link of connexion between, the unborn infant and the parent; the channel, through whose arteries and veins the oxygenated and the effete blood pa.s.sed to and from the parental system, when as yet the unused lungs had not received one breath of vital air.

And thus the life of the individual Man before us pa.s.ses, by a necessary retrogression, back to the life of another individual, from whose substance his own substance was formed by gemmation; one of the component cells of whose structure was the primordial cell, from which have been developed successively all the cells which now make up his mature and perfect organism.

How is it possible to avoid this conclusion? Has not the physiologist irrefragable grounds for it, founded on universal experience? Has not observation abundantly shown, that, wherever the bones, flesh, blood, teeth, nails, hair of man exist, the aggregate body has pa.s.sed through stages exactly correspondent to those alluded to above, and has originated in the uterus of a mother, its foetal life being, so to speak, a budding out of hers? Has the combined experience of mankind ever seen a solitary exception to this law? How, then, can we refuse the concession that, in the individual before us, in whom we find all the phenomena that we are accustomed to a.s.sociate with adult Man, repeated in the most exact verisimilitude, without a single flaw--how, I say, can we hesitate to a.s.sert that such was his origin too?

And yet, in order to a.s.sert it, we must be prepared to adopt the old Pagan doctrine of the eternity of matter; _ex nihilo nihil fit_. But those with whom I argue are precluded from this, by my first Postulate.

XI.

PARALLELS AND PRECEDENTS.

(_Germs._)

"Every cell, like every individual Plant or Animal, is the product of a previous organism of the same kind."--(DR.

CARPENTER, _Comp. Physiol._ -- 347.)

In the preceding examples I have a.s.sumed that every organic ent.i.ty was created in that stage of its being which const.i.tutes the acme of its peculiar development; when all its faculties are in their highest perfection, and when it is best fitted to reproduce its own image. From the very nature of things I judge that this was the actual fact;[90]

since, if we suppose the formation of the primitive creatures in an undeveloped or infant condition, a period would require to lapse before the increase of the species could begin; which time would be wasted. To those, indeed, who receive as authority the testimony of the Holy Scripture, the matter stands on more than probable ground; for its statements, as to the condition of the things created, are clear and full: they were not seeds, and germs, and eggs, and embryos,--but "the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself,"--"great whales,"--"winged fowl,"--"the beast of the earth,"--and "man."[91]

But I do not mean to s.h.i.+eld myself behind authority. I have begged the _fact_ of creation; but not the truth, nor even the existence, of any historic doc.u.ment describing it. It is essential to my argument that any such be left entirely out of the question; and, for the present, I accordingly ignore the Bible.

It is possible that some opponent may object to my a.s.sumption of maturity in created organisms.

"Your deductions may be sound enough," such an one may say, "provided your newly-created Locust-tree had so many concentric cylinders of timber, your Tree-fern had a well-developed stem of leaf-bases, your Coral a great aggregation of polype-cells, your Tortoise a carapace of many-laminated plates, your Elephant a half-worn set of molars, and your Man a thoroughly ossified skeleton. But how do you know that either of these organisms was created in this mature stage? I will not deny that each was created,--was called suddenly out of non-ent.i.ty into ent.i.ty; but I believe, or at least I choose to believe,--that each was created in the simplest form in which it can exist; as the seed, the gemmule, the ovum, the--ahem!"

Pray go on! you were about to say "the infant," or "the foetus," or "the embryo," probably; pray make your selection: which will you say?

"Well, I hardly know. Because, if I choose the new-born infant, you will say, Its condition implies a nine months' pre-existence, certainly; not to speak of the absurdity of a new-born infant being cast out into an open world without a parent to feed it. If I say, The foetus, or the still more incipient embryo, I involve, at once, a pre-existent mother.

I am afraid you have me there!"

I think I have. However, let us take up the matter orderly, and proceed on the supposition that my previous examples must be all cancelled, and the question argued _de novo_, on the a.s.sumption that each organism was created in its least developed condition.

It will not be considered necessary, I suppose, to look at any intermediate condition of the organisms. The argument which is based upon the leaf-scales of the Fern or the Palm would essentially apply to either of these plants when it first issues from the ground. At the period when it comprises but a single frond, the botanist would no more hesitate in p.r.o.nouncing that the organism had pa.s.sed through stages previous to that one, than he would when it possesses an elongated stipe; though, in the latter case, the evidences of the pre-existence are more patent to the uninstructed eye. He would say, The single frond implies, with absolute necessity, a spore in the one case, a seed in the other; and we need not to see either, to be a.s.sured that this must have preceded the leaf-stage.

But you go farther back still. "The plant was created as a seed." Let us renew our imaginary tour at the epoch, or epochs (as many as you please), of creation, on this supposition.

Here is a very young plant of the curious Seych.e.l.les Palm or Double Cocoa-nut (_Lodoicea Sech.e.l.larum_). A single frond is all that is yet developed, and this is as yet unexpanded, the pinnae being still folded on the midrib, like a fan. Trace the frond down to its base. It springs from a thick horizontal cylindric process, which has also shot down a radicle into the soil. We trace the cylindrical stem along the surface of the soil, and find, lying on the ground, among the gra.s.s, but not buried, a great double nut, something like the two hemispheres of a human brain, or like a common cocoa-nut, half split open and healed. Out of this the thick stem has issued; and we find that it is only the cotyledon of the seed, that has prolonged its base in the process of germination, in order to throw up, clear of the nut, the plumule and radicle.

We look at the great nut, and find, on the woody exterior of the fibrous pericarp, at the side opposite to that whence issues the cotyledon, a broad scar. What is this? It is the _mark left by the severance of a footstalk_, which united the fruit to the parent plant. This great drupe was once a small ovary seated in the centre of a three-petaled flower, which, with many others, issued out of a great spathe, a ma.s.s of inflorescence, and hung down from the base of the leafy coronal of an adult palm-tree. This scar is an irreproachable witness of the existence of the parent palm.

Here, lying on the dry and dusty earth, is a brown flat bean of great hardness. This is a seed destined by and by to produce that splendid tree _Erythrina crista-galli_. But it has been just created.

This bean bears on one of its edges an oval scar, very distinctly marked, called the _hilum_. This was the point of attachment of a short column, by which the seed was united to one of the sutures of a long pod, in the interior of which it lay, in company with several others like itself. This great legume or pod had been the bottom of the pistil of a papilionaceous flower, crowned by a tiny stigma, lodged in a sheath formed by the united stamens, and surrounded by a corolla of refulgent scarlet petals.

Of course such a flower was not an independent organism; it was one of many that adorned a great tree, the history of whose life would carry us back through several generations of human years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GARDEN TULIP.

Fig. 1. A flower with two petals removed, to show the ovary, _a_. Fig.

2. The same ovary, more mature, divided longitudinally; _b_, the unripe seeds, packed on each other; _c_, a portion of the same carpel, from which the seeds have been removed.]

This single infolding leaf, that is just shooting from the soil, so small and feeble,--what of this? There are certainly no concentric cylinders of timber here: can we trace a previous history of this?

Yes: by carefully removing the soil from the base, we see that it originates in a flat yellow seed--the seed of a Tulip. Here again we have no difficulty in detecting evidence of its former attachment. A great number of these seeds were once closely packed one on another, in each of the three carpels that const.i.tuted the capsule. And this capsule had been the oblong, three-sided ovary, which formed the body of the pistil in some beautiful Tulip.

Do you observe these two round fleshy leaves, just peeping from the sandy earth? They are the earliest growths of a plant of _Arachis hypogaea_. In this case again, to understand the true relations of this organism, we must expose it wholly to view.

Beneath the surface of the earth, then, I find that these seed-leaves are the two halves (_cotyledons_) of a kind of pea, which was formerly enclosed in a wrinkled skinny pod. But what is most interesting is that the pod is here, the cotyledons shooting out of it. And, attached to one end of the pod, here is a slender stalk, now withered and dry, which projects out of the ground into the air.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMINATION OF EARTH-PEA.]

Now here we have a beautiful link of connexion with the past. The plant before us does not ripen its seeds, and then drop them to care for themselves, as most plants do. "The young fruit, instead of being placed at the bottom of the calyx, as in other kinds of pulse, is found at the bottom and in the inside of a long slender tube, which looks like a flower-stalk. When the flower has withered, and the young fruit is fertilized, nothing but the bottom of the tube with its contents remains. At this period a small point projects from the summit of the young fruit, and gradually elongates, curving downwards towards the earth. At the same time the stalk of the fruit lengthens, until the small point strikes the earth, into which the now half-grown fruit is speedily forced, and where it finally ripens in what would seem a most unnatural position."[92]

The young plant before us has been this moment created, and created in this incipient stage of growth: and yet there is, even here, an indubitable evidence, so far as physical phenomena can afford it, of a past history. It would be utterly impossible to select any stage in the life of the Earth-pea, which did not connect itself, visibly and palpably, with a previous stage.

Let us return to the sh.o.r.e-loving Mangrove. You object to my a.s.sumption that it was created as a tree, with a well-branched stem elevated upon a series of arching roots; and to my deduction of pre-lapsed years for the formation of those roots. Very well. I give it up. You allow that the primitive Mangrove was created in some stage, but you contend for the germ-stage, the simplest condition of the plant, whatever that might be.

Now, where shall we find it? In the first pair of developed leaves? They certainly point back to the cotyledons. To the cotyledons, then, let us look.

Lo! the young plant is germinating before its connexion with the parent is severed. It is the singular habit of this tree, that its seeds are already in a growing condition, while they hang from the twig. Each seed is a long club-shaped body, with a bulbous base and a slender point, more or less produced. While it yet hangs from the branch, the radicle and crown of the root begin to grow, and gradually lengthen, until the tip reaches the soil, which it penetrates and thus roots itself; while those which depend from the higher branches, after growing for a while, drop, and, sticking in the mud, throw out roots from one end, and leaves from the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEED OF MANGROVE.]

What have you gained, then, in this case, by going back to the germ? The germ as decisively a.s.serts its origination from an already existing organism--the parent tree--as the flouris.h.i.+ng tree witnesses its gradual development from a germ. The Mangrove could not by possibility have been created in any stage, consistent with the ident.i.ty of the species with that which we behold now in the nineteenth century,--that did not show ocular evidence of a previous history;--evidence from the nature of things fallacious.

It would be merely tiresome to go on through the vegetable kingdom. In every plant the simplest condition--viz. that of a spore or seed--depends on some development, or process, or series of processes, that have preceded it. Nor does the lapse of time between the previous process and the apparent result at all destroy their necessary connexion. In the case of the curious Misseltoes, the ovule does not appear till three months after the pollen has been shed; but when it does appear, its existence as an organism capable of developing the characteristic form of its species, is as truly dependent on the previous existence of the pollen, as if not an hour had intervened.

Supposing the essential conditions of vegetable organisms to have been at the first what they are now; in other words, supposing specific ident.i.ty to have been always maintained,--which I have demanded as a postulate for this argument,--it appears to me demonstrable, that every plant in the world presented at the moment of its creation evidences _prochronic_ development, in nowise to be distinguished from those on which we firmly rely as proving the lapse of time.

But is the case otherwise in the animal world?

We traced back the history of our Medusa through its marvellous series of gemmative developments, till we reached the minute Infusory-like gemmule, which is its simplest form. Now it is quite legitimate to a.s.sume that _this_, and not the pulmonigrade umbrelliform stage, was the one in which the new-created Medusa began existence. Have we, then, got rid of the evidence of past time, which we deduced from the successive changes through which the adult had pa.s.sed? What is this ciliated planule, and whence comes it? It is the embryo discharged from the fringed ovary of a female Medusa; it has already pa.s.sed through several changes of colour and form. It is now of a deep yellow colour; it has been violet; it has been colourless: it is now shaped like a dumb-bell; it was a globule; it had been a mulberry-ma.s.s. Yet earlier, it had been a component cell of the ovarian band, which divided the generative cavity from that of the stomach, in the parent Medusa.

In like manner the ciliated gemmule from which was formed the "pluteus"

of the Urchin, was dependent on the existence of a parent Urchin; the monadiform germ from which was developed the pentacrinus of the Feather-star, was originally hidden in the ovarian tubes of a parent Feather-Star: the infant _Serpula_ that deposited the first atoms of calcareous matter as a commenced tube, had begun its own existence in the body of a parent _Serpula_.

It is true the evidence of the connexion between the germ and the parent is not in these low forms always patent to the eye; it is physiological. But it is not less conclusive to one who is able to appreciate its force. A physiologist is as sure that every germ, every ovum, in the Invertebrate animals, was produced by an animal of a former generation, as he is of the same fact in a Mammal, where his eye can see the scar of the umbilical cord.