The Materialistic Demonstration of _Generatio Spontanea_.
This whole method is consequently unsatisfactory. With Harvey’s law
proved in the empirical way, the only way hitherto tried, we are still
unable to decide how the first organism came into existence, and this
is probably after all the most important question. Because, as Büchner
rightly points out: “If life has a supernatural beginning, it has also
a supernatural subsequent existence.” Even if we were observing with
our own eyes the creation of the first organism we would not be able to
say whether it were the result of natural or supernatural forces. The
moment our study commenced, the mystic act of creation would already
have taken place, an act which lies beyond the boundaries of research,
and which we never shall be able to penetrate, however minute or
comprehensive our observations. An entirely different method is here
necessary. Our endeavor must be to find the innermost cause of the whole
series of generations evolving throughout the ages. In other words, we
must derive Harvey’s law from the inner nature of matter itself, show
that this matter has such qualities that it cannot, never could, and
never will, be able to produce a single living being. Only then shall
we have demonstrated that Harvey’s formula is a universal, natural law,
and then it will be not only our right but our duty to draw its logical
consequences.
Is it possible to show that matter possesses such qualities? In regard
to the matter of which our earth is composed we are at least able to
closely investigate its qualities. But our earth is only an insignificant
point in the universe and we must search the entire cosmos. Is not this
impossible? We answer that in many ways, especially through the spectral
analysis, we already know that nature’s elements everywhere are the
same and that they everywhere have the same qualities. If Harvey’s law
can be deduced from the matter we are able to investigate, we have at
the same time shown its validity for the whole of the universe without
limitations as to time and space; because then we may apply in regard to
organic substance Büchner’s true remark as to the products of nature in
times past. “The natural forces,” he says, “that governed the universe
formerly are the same as those whose results we now witness every day
and moment. Earth’s past time is to our thought nothing but an unrolling
of its present. The geologists, guided by their knowledge of nature and
its present laws, have been able with increasing accuracy to trace back
evolution to the most distant ages. Meanwhile it has been established
that everywhere and during all time only those elements and forces have
been active which surround us today. Nowhere has a point been found where
research had to be thrown overboard and an interference of unknown forces
substituted; and nowhere and never will this happen. Everywhere the same
laws were in force and the same matter was found. Historical research has
demonstrated that past and present are subject to the same evolution,
rest on the same basis.” And different it could not be, reasons Büchner,
since life knows no exceptions, does not shirk any inorganic forces, but
is itself only the result of the activity of these forces.
To obtain a definite understanding of the origin of life it is therefore
sufficient to examine the origin of organic matter in our days, and
for such an analysis there is at least no lack of material. Wherever a
tree or a grass blade grows or a seed sprouts there dead substance is
transformed into living; wherever an animal or a plant is decaying,
there organic matter is again turned into inorganic.
The result obtained through such investigations already made, stood
in direct opposition to the immediate observations. Although Harvey’s
formula finally was accepted, it was nevertheless taught _that no
specific life-force exists_.
This contradiction was never fully understood or emphasized during the
last century, and the reason was that the materialistic tendency was
so predominant that nobody noticed that the question of life-force is
the innermost main point, around which not only _generatio spontanea_
and _omne vivum ex vivo_, but also their consequences, materialism and
idealism, are centered.
But in order to deny life-force as an independent principle, some
scientific facts to build upon were necessary and these were not lacking.
Before we state these facts we will in a few words describe the
historical situation.
According to the previously prevailing vitalistic doctrine a specific
life-force existed, present and active in all organic processes. The
conceptions in regard to these processes were, however, very dim, and the
reason was that the problem of combustion had not yet been solved.
This problem may be said to be the very key to the chemical explanation
of an organism. The ancient mystery of fire was first solved by Lavoisier
after Scheele and Priestly had discovered oxygen. The solution of this
complicated question not only became the starting point for a new and
rapid evolution of chemistry, it also almost immediately threw a clear
light on the innermost recesses of the organism.
The elementary constituents of the organism and their origin were known
before, and it now became also possible to explain the great store of
energy that the living being possesses. To assume a specific life-force
seemed superfluous. Life-force, from having been the indispensable
explanation of organic phenomena, commenced more and more to be regarded
as a “back-way for ignorance,” one “of those many side doors that dull
heads employ when they find it too laborious to think about something
that they do not understand.”
It was natural that the materialists would eagerly embrace these ideas.
From the few words with which Büchner introduces his chapter about
life-force, we obtain a clear insight into the opinions that are held on
this subject in the world of natural science. “The mystic notions,” says
Büchner, “that have confused the philosophy of science were invented by
a time possessing but a slight knowledge of nature. To these notions,
which have been thrown overboard by a later exact scientific research,
belongs first of all the so-called life-force. Scarcely has there ever
existed an hypothesis more detrimental to the cause of science than this
singular organic force presented in contradistinction to the inorganic
forces, gravity, affinity, light, electricity, magnetism, etc. If science
were forced to acknowledge such an hypothesis, all we have said about
the immutability of the natural laws and of the mechanical order of the
universe would collapse, and we would be forced to admit that a higher
hand interferes in the course of nature, dictating exceptional laws that
defy all calculations. A break would be found in the natural structure
of the world, science would despair, and all physical and psychical
research cease. Fortunately science has not been obliged to yield to
the irrational pressure of the dynamists, but, on the contrary, has won
everywhere a splendid victory; it has lately gathered such a mass of
self-evident facts to its support that life-force nowadays wanders an
empty shadow along the boundaries of natural science. All those who have
made a closer study of any of the branches of science that deal at all
with the organic world, agree, almost to a man, in the condemnation of
life-force, and the very word is so detested by science that it is always
purposely avoided.”
We may now let Büchner present the real, scientific evidence why
life-force must be charged to the ignorance of a time when knowledge of
nature was but slight. In this way the reader will perhaps obtain a more
direct and at the same time an historic view of the materialistic mode of
thinking.
Above all, says Büchner, it is the province of chemistry to show that the
elements of matter are everywhere the same in the inorganic as well as
in the organic world, and that life substance is unable to present one
single atom not found in inorganic nature and therefore not partaking in
the general flux (_Stoffwechsel_) of matter. Chemistry has decomposed
organic bodies into their elements exactly as it did before with the
inorganic.
All known inorganic forces act identically with respect to _living_ as
to _dead_ nature. We have seen that forces are nothing but qualities
and motions of the smallest particles of matter, the atoms, with which
these forces are invariably and inseparably conjoined. An atom therefore
under all circumstances can only perform the same work, develop the same
forces, produce the same effects, whether it belongs for the moment to
an organic or to an inorganic composition. Respiration, digestion, the
process of growing and segregation are all chemical reactions. Oxygen,
hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen are composed and decomposed within the
organic body in accordance with the same laws that govern them outside.
We have also learned more perfectly how nourishment is transformed into
organic tissues, and we know that through different channels it leaves
the body in precisely the same quantity as it entered, partly unmodified
and partly in other forms and compositions. No one atom has meanwhile
been lost or become another. Digestion is a purely chemical process. The
stomach of an animal may well be compared to a chemical retort, where the
substances there mixed are decomposed and composed exactly according to
the general laws of chemical affinity.
These facts, which may be multiplied _ad infinitum_, enable us to
understand that the difference between organic and inorganic is
non-essential, and that therefore every living being may be considered a
chemical laboratory, whence we arrive at the following result:
_Because daily experience teaches us that all organisms consist of the
same atoms as does inorganic nature, although in different compositions,
therefore no specific organic force, no life-force, can exist. This
latter is not a principle, but a result._ When organic substance
assimilates inorganic and brings it into its own characteristic
condition, this is not done through a specific force, but through a kind
of infection, whereby the molecular conditions in the organic substance
are transferred to the inorganic.
But not only does organic matter consist of the same elements that
are to be found in inorganic nature, but the organism as a whole is
nothing but a bodily mechanism not differing from other machines except
in its more complicated construction. Water, says Büchner, which must
be considered as the foremost and most important part in all organic
beings, and without which all animal and plant life were impossible,
water penetrates, flows and sinks according to the laws of gravity, not
differing by the breadth of a hair in its action within and without the
organism. The circulation of the blood is as mechanical as we could
wish, and the anatomic contrivance that causes it bears a surprising
likeness to mechanical apparatus made by man’s hand. The heart is
provided with valves just as a steam engine; the valve movements produce
audible sounds. The rise of the blood from the lower parts of the body
to the heart against gravity can only be made possible by a mechanical
arrangement. The bowels convey their content mechanically; mechanically
the muscle movements take place, and mechanical motility characterizes
men and animals. The human eye obeys the same laws as a camera obscura
and the ear catches the sound waves in same way as does any other vault,
and so on.
Science, therefore, entertains no doubt that the living organism is a
machine as well as the steam engine, i. e., a system where chemical
affinity produces heat, electricity and muscular energy.
Now, are these facts, pointed out by Büchner, true and correct?
Undoubtedly they are in all essential respects eternal truths, and we
may add that they are just as important foundations for idealism as
the materialists have claimed them to be for their opinion. But before
we take up this subject let us see how the materialists derive their
philosophy from the facts mentioned.
There are many other objects in this world, of which we might almost
verbally repeat what Büchner says about organic matter; for instance,
windows, doors, locks, bricks, houses, etc. In these objects also there
is not one atom to be found which was not present in the raw material
of which they were made. But does the raw material itself produce these
things? So Büchner reasons. He says: “_Because all organic matter
consists of inorganic raw material, therefore the raw material, itself,
has made the organic matter. Because the organism is essentially like a
steam engine, the building material itself has made the organism._”
This headlong way of reasoning and concluding is not characteristic of
Büchner alone, but applies equally to the whole materialistic school
during the past century.
We have not said that inorganic raw material is unable to produce
organic substance spontaneously, which substance later upbuilds the
organism, but for the present this remains an open question to which
as yet the materialists have not given an answer. But before we enter
the discussion of this extremely important question, we will in this
connection mention another discovery of natural science which seems
exactly to support the materialistic trend of thought, a fact, therefore,
that crowns, so to speak, their whole philosophy.
Up to the year 1828 it was thought that organic substance could be
created only by the force of life. But Wöhler unexpectedly succeeded in
producing organic compositions from inorganic substances, a discovery
which was followed by a series of others in the same direction. It is
with evident satisfaction that Büchner calls our attention to these facts.
In order to show the necessity for assuming a life-force, he says, people
have reminded the chemists that they are unable to produce organic
compositions, that is, the peculiar grouping of the elements into those
ternary and quaternary compounds which owe their existence to an organic
being, endowed with life and life-force, and they have added the amusing
remark that the chemists must produce living beings in their retorts—make
men—if there be no life-force and if life be only the result of chemical
processes. The chemists have not been at a loss for an answer. They have
made dextrose, several organic acids and bases, and recently they have
also succeeded in producing _hydrates of carbon_. Evolution has proceeded
rapidly in this direction, and today alcohol and precious perfumes are
made from coal, candles from slate, Berlin blue, taurin and innumerable
other bodies—formerly believed to be exclusively of animal or plant
origin—from the simple material that inorganic nature offers us.
The materialists have a custom of not considering themselves under
obligation to do more than point to some scientific facts, without
investigating whether these facts support their speculations or not.
Faithful to this custom, Büchner stops just where his own researches
should have commenced. Büchner has not written a textbook on physics or
chemistry. He has undertaken the extremely serious task of investigating
whether modern natural science has produced results which show that
nothing but matter and its forces, and consequently no soul, no eternal
life, etc., exist. Our first demand of such an analysis would be, to
put it moderately, that the facts cited really prove what they are put
forward to prove. But to this demand neither Büchner nor his followers
pay any attention. Büchner might, for instance, in regard to the facts
last mentioned, have taken the following questions as the starting point
for his investigations:
It is true that the chemists have produced artificially certain organic
compounds of inorganic elements, and they will probably go much further
in this direction. But is this really something to be wondered at, when
all organic substance is composed of inorganic elements which, wherever
they exist, possess the same qualities? The question is how this organic
substance is formed. Does it appear spontaneously in the chemist’s
laboratory while he himself stands idle, observing the phenomenon, or
must he interfere, guide and plan the activity of the chemical forces
in order to obtain these artificial compounds? Why should not something
similar take place in the laboratory of inorganic nature? There is, as
far as our experience goes, no organic substance to be found due to the
spontaneous action of known natural laws. What is the reason of this? How
is organic matter formed in nature? And, further, is there no difference
between the organic matter produced by the chemists and that present in
_living_ nature? And if this difference proves to be that the former is
_not_ organized while the latter always is, why cannot the chemists
produce organized matter?
If Büchner had proposed these or similar questions and taken time to
think them over, he would have obtained a different result, but instead
he breaks off his argumentation just where it should have commenced.
Consequently the fault in the materialists’ process of thinking does not
lie in the facts used as foundation for their argument. The premises and
the beginning are correct. Just because organic matter consists of the
same elements as inorganic, just for this reason natural science can
decide whether the physical laws are able spontaneously to produce such
matter and such machines. The materialists have stopped after providing
the introduction; the continuation and the end are lacking. They have
overlooked the whole series of scientific facts that stand in necessary
correlation to the starting point. We have therefore only to resume the
interrupted demonstration and will then endeavor to make the latter part
as simple and comprehensible as Büchner made the former.