STUDY V. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE AND THEORY OF RULE. "We will trust God; the blank interstices With pillar'd marble rare, or knit across E. B. BROWNING. THALES (B.C. 636) considered that water was the source and continuer of life. Diogenes, of Apollonia (B.C. 400), said the air was dpyn, a beginning, a soul, such as philosophers sought, evolving itself in all life. Democritus (B.C. 460-357) taught that nothing existed but atoms and empty space-all else is mere opinion. Epicurus (B.C. 341-270) asserted that the mechanical shock of atoms is the all-sufficient cause of things. It was maintained by Empedocles (B.C. 450) that the fittest survive, and unfit combinations rapidly disappear. Thence, till our own time, a few men have held that—" Nature does all things, does them of herself without God." "The mechanical shock and interaction of atoms, trying of motions and unions from all eternity, without any determination by intelligent design, account sufficiently for the constitution and phenomena of the universe." Atoms, individually dead, without sensation and intelligence, get up of themselves, run together, form all actual and imaginable combinations, as if under a drill-master, without a drill-master. Every one, by itself, is dead; yet, together they live. When apart, they are without sensation, possess no intelligence; collectively, they possess sensation, are full of wisdom, and form the universal Mind-if there be Mind. We are told-" The physical philosopher can know nothing but matter, force, space, and necessity." Were we not sure that there is indeed Intelligence at the heart of things, these men, with their theories, which place our feet on the rungs of a ladder the reverse of Jacob's, and leading to the antipodes of heaven, would make us say— "We are sick, and heart-sore, And weary; let us sleep- Never to waken more." Men, who believe everything that is not in Scripture, assert that all things exist by "a continual becoming," and that this intelligible hypothesis explains everything-"matter being eternal." Then we are told-" Matter itself, as generally conceived, does not necessarily exist, may be only a phenomenal centre of energy;" indeed, "matter is but the hypothetical mode of our own consciousness." Delightfully clear-nought is everything and everything is nought. There is nothing so devoid of interest as doing something which leads to nothing, and is worth nothing. Some discern in matter "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life;" nevertheless, the "chasm" between our consciousness and this matter "must ever remain intellectually impassable." They say "Everything may be explained on mechanical principles;" yet, things exist which are not material. "The so-called 'imponderables,'-things of old supposed to be matter-such as heat, light, etc., are now known by the purely experimental, and therefore the only safe method, to be but varieties of what we call 'energy. In maintenance of materialism it is affirmed— "There is one energy, and that is mechanical;" chemical energy is mechanical, only something different. "A living organism is entirely mechanical," but with its mechanical and chemical relations, has something else which is not like matter, nor like mechanical force. It may be fairly questioned by plain men, whether science is not hindered by such statements; chemical energy is something more than mechanical power, if, at the same time, it is something different; and a living organism is not wholly mechanical if it contains something not explainable by mechanics. It is a good old saying "The best way to see by Divine Light is to put out your own candle." These men, not having Divine Light, put out their candles, and are in total darkness. "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 17: P. G. Tait, M. A Theories of Life. 85 A professor supposes, "that by the different grouping of the same units, and then by combination of the unlike groups, each with its own, or each with other kinds, you get everything else;" another professor talks about "Nature's great progression from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will," and the thing is done. The former professor gravely says, "the system is now complete, no further advance in the same direction is probable or required." The latter states, "Those who do not accept it have not kept pace with recent advances in natural history, are behind in science, generally unworthy of consideration." If we look at objects in that way, everything signifies nothing, and nothing is anything. So there is causality, but no cause; power, but no person; rule, but no ruler; and we are to graduate under Professor Mephistopheles ; "More brains have I than all the tribe Faust. The physical action which accompanies vital and mental changes seems to be an undulatory displacement of molecules, resulting in myriads of little waves or pulses of movement; so that states of consciousness are attended by the transmission of waves from one nerve-cell to another. Because life and consciousness and thought thus act on our bodies, we are told, "The unit of motion is identical with the unit of feeling; between the two there is an unfailing parallelism; the one group of phenomena can be correctly described by formulæ invented to describe the other group." It is a great falsity. Everything in the world-from the minutest particle to the grandest centre of greatest constellations—is in motion; but life animates only a few. The oscillations of a needle are not identical with magnetism, the two are not to be recognised as one. Movements are modes in which life reveals itself. They are not life, but a manifestation; not the cause, but the effect. We are told-" Life essentially consists in the continuous adjustment of relations within the organism to relations in the environment." Not so: the adjustment is caused by life, is the exhibition of life, not life itself. Some state"In the vegetal world, and in the lower regions of the animal world, life is purely, or almost purely, physico-chemical; it becomes more and more predominately psychical as we ascend in the animal world, until at the summit it is mainly psychical." Reply-"We know matter by our states of consciousness, perceptions of resistance, extension, colour, sound, odour; and we know motion by the sequent states of consciousness produced in the muscles of the eyes, or of the tactual, or of other organs, in the act of attending to the moving object. It is rather strange that, by matter and motion whose essence is an occulta vis; any man pretends to explain more unknowable things. The defect is they lead to greater darkness; are not lights flashed into an inner chamber, do not bring us to the foot of that ladder on whose summit Jacob saw God. 66 No one can cognise this occulta vis" in life; and it is sought, strange to say, among the dead. Take protoplasm, that simplest substance in which life manifests itself, kill it, find three dead compounds, carbonic acid, water, ammonia, ordinary dead matter; then try to find life-the occulta vis, amongst these dead. Not finding it, shall we assert"This protoplasm is ordinary matter, differing only in the manner its atoms are aggregated, and is resolved into ordinary matter when the life-work is done?" Yes, and we may further state-"The compounds or constituents of protoplasm, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless; but, brought together under certain conditions, they exhibit the phenomena of life." We know that very well, but the "certain conditions" are vital. We cannot make the protoplasm, nor the vital conditions, by any process known in our laboratories. Why protoplasm manifests properties, not possessed by any of its constituents, we do not know: except by the power of life. Mysterious the fact is, but common; for every chemical synthesis manifests a new set of insoluble properties. We say insoluble, for though by chemical synthesis we produce new sets of properties; we cannot, by any synthesis, construct organisable matter. We cannot make protoplasm; nor, if we made this dead matter, could we give it life. We obtain no star-like adornment: but science showing that God is the author and giver, we learn that dying to sin and living unto The How and Why of Life. 87 righteousness, we obtain life and perfection in the splendour toward which creation tends. A peculiar operation precedes and accompanies life. By some new grouping of particles into peculiarity of structure, some displacement of molecules by myriads of little waves, some new force put in operation by energy, there is a new work by which plants, beasts, men, have life in themselves. This may be illustrated by growth. "The faculty of combining heterogeneous compounds into matter like itself-growth, in fact is the very thing possessed by no other substance in the world." Any attempt to minimise the distinction and difference between living matter and dead albumen and protein confuses counsel. Take some complicate chance formation from the bottom, or from the shore of the sea, at the beginning of the world, "And when you have got this substance, you are as far on your way to albumen as a man ascending a hill would be on his way to the moon; and when you have got albumen, you are still as far from living matter as in the moon you would be from the fixed stars."" No process has been discovered which explains the origin of living matter. If such process were discovered, it would enlarge our admiration of the wonder, by which God bridges the gulf that separates the dead from the living. Scripture draws a picture, not of the How, but of the Why, there is life. Creation, Redemption, Regeneration, are in Time, in Nature, in History, a triple revelation of great acts by which the Eternal graduates us for everlasting existence. In matter, the visible garment of the Almighty, are infinite metamorphoses; in life, illimitable progression ; in historic development of thought, the mental habits of bygone generations enter present modes of thinking. We are taught to adore a Father who leads us to fulness of life. Every temptation we resist, every generous impulse wisely yielded to, every noble thought encouraged, every sacred aspiration realised, adds its own energy to the impetus of the great movement which bears all true-hearted men towards higher character and richer existence (John xiv. 23). There is a Spirit of infinite perfection in whom we live, and "The Protoplastic Theory of Life," pp. 184, 185: J. Drysdale, M.D. * Ibid. p. 269. |