Organic Matter as a Product of Art.
From the previous chapter we now draw the extremely important conclusion
that all organic matter is a _product of art_, that is, a product which
the forces of nature cannot produce. Spontaneously these forces only
create natural products. Products of art belong to an entirely different
category; they owe their existence to a foreign interference in the
natural order of the world and have a cause that does not fall within
the limits of a mere mechanical causality. But before we discuss this
subject, let us first thoroughly understand what we mean by saying that
organic matter is a product of art.
Materialists have shown that the organism closely resembles a steam
engine, but they have neglected to point out that the similarity extends
also to the mode in which they are produced. Everybody is probably
convinced that the forces of nature have never made and never will make a
steam engine. If the same might be said in regard to the machines which
we call organisms, then materialism would be disproved. But why, to begin
with, cannot the forces of nature build steam engines? We must be able to
present the reasons for this statement.
If we first consider the building material, we find this in the factories
in the form of plates, bars and ingots of iron, copper, lead, tin, etc.
Where do these metals come from? Nowhere in nature is such material
found.[2]
Humanity had inhabited the earth thousands of years without having an
idea of the existence of such substances as iron, copper, lead, etc. The
metals are chemical ingredients in our minerals and from these minerals
they are extracted by complicated, artificial processes. The ore is often
lifted out of the depths of the mountains; it goes through a series of
treatments which the forces of nature cannot spontaneously undertake. We
will here give only a moment’s attention to the process of reduction, or
the separation of the metal from its natural compounds. This, as we know,
is done in our blast furnaces, where the iron is reduced through the
presence of coal and other suitable substances in certain proportions.
If we now remember that the heat in our furnaces often reaches about
2000° Centigrade we see at once that the sun may shine on our mountains
throughout eternity without ever producing the temperature necessary for
the reduction.
But the engine is not yet completed. The plates must be first rolled and
shaped, the ingots must be melted and cast into frames, shafts, bearings,
etc.; in short, the raw material must be formed into all those numerous
parts of which the machine is composed. The engine is from beginning to
end a product of art.
There is especially one circumstance pertaining to all these
transformations that merits a closer attention. If we remember that all
the material used in a product of art is taken from nature, and besides
that, all the processes in making and shaping the raw material are
carried out through the employment of natural laws, we might still ask
the question, why physical forces should not enter spontaneously into
the necessary artificial combinations for producing this result. Until
we have pointed out the quality in matter which prevents this, we have
not completely demonstrated the inability of natural forces to build an
engine spontaneously.
This quality has been named _vis inertiae_, the inertia of matter, one
of the most important natural laws that exist. What does this law teach
us? It says that matter cannot itself change its condition. If a body is
in motion it can never come to rest unless another force at least equal
to the primary opposes the motion. If it be at rest, it cannot impart
motion unto itself; energy, applied from without, is necessary. Inertia
keeps the earth moving around the sun; a stone thrown into the air would
proceed everlastingly with its initial velocity if the attraction of the
earth did not interfere.
Because of this quality, then, matter remains in its natural equilibrium.
An engine would never be built because the ore would stay in the
mountains and the metals forever remain in their compounds. Every product
of art requires a foreign interference in the material world; matter,
in consequence of its inertia, presents a determined and often very
energetic resistance to such an intervention.
Exactly the same reasons that prevent natural forces from building a
steam engine, cause also their inability to produce an organism, and this
in a much higher degree because the organism is in a still fuller sense
a product of art. The organic building material, instead of being plates
and ingots of iron, copper, lead, etc., consists of carbon, hydrogen,
sulphur, phosphorus, chlorin, potassium, sodium, magnesia, etc., or both
metals and metalloids of which the former, on account of their negative,
and the latter because of their positive qualities cannot exist in a
free state. From the minerals found in nature these substances must be
extracted for organic purposes. The elements are different, but otherwise
we may verbally repeat in regard to organic substance what has been
previously said about the steam engine.
It is the creation of organic matter by art that the materialists have
neglected to take into account. Therefore they look upon the organism
just as a new race, suddenly succeeding humanity, would view our steam
engines. These machines would certainly appear very mysterious to the
earth’s new inhabitants. But a growing civilization would undoubtedly
discover that all the material used in the engine is taken from ores
to be found in nature. If now somebody would draw the conclusion that
these ores themselves had made the engine he would reason as do the
materialists today in regard to the organism. The parallel does not halt
in any respect, but it is sufficient in this connection to call attention
only to one or two of the more important components of the organism.
Organic matter, or combustible substance, consists of carbon and hydrogen
which in an organism are comparable to the iron in a steam engine. But
nowhere in nature is free hydrogen or free inorganic carbon to be found.
The carbon was burned to carbonic acid in earth’s first combustion, and
similarly the hydrogen was burned to water long before the conditions
for organic life existed on the earth.
From these original products of combustion, burnable organic matter is
formed by decomposition of carbonic acid and water into their elements,
carbon and hydrogen, and by their subsequent combination through feebler
chemical forces into sugar, starch, etc., which substances through a new
combustion are again turned into carbonic acid and water. The natural
forces cannot spontaneously undertake these transformations that only
take place because of artificial arrangements. The processes of nature go
in the entirely opposite direction, as we have seen.
As a matter of fact, the reduction of carbonic acid and water is done
through the direct assistance of living beings. From the sun they take
their power. But how ineffective the sun would be, left to itself,
is seen already by the fact that carbonic acid is disintegrated at a
temperature of 1300° C. and water only at 1500°. Products of art must be
resorted to, and we know that by lenses, burning mirrors, photographic
cameras and the like the sun may be forced to accomplish results that
otherwise would be impossible. Such artificial apparatus, then, must be
the chlorophyll granules in the cells. More strikingly yet, these organs
of the cell may be compared to our blast-furnaces, as it is just in the
chlorophyll granules that the reduction of carbonic acid and water,
according to science, takes place. If these artificial devices, invented
and constructed by the lower living units that constitute the cell, did
not exist, the sun might shine throughout eternity on water and carbonic
acid without producing organic building material.
This material is and must be the product of art. If the forces of
inorganic nature spontaneously produced sugar, starch, etc., these
substances must have the same quality as our rocks, minerals, etc., of
being products of combustion, which in such a supposed case, perhaps,
would be made burnable if transformed into water and carbonic acid. We
would obtain a creation turned upside down and analogous to a world where
the bodies we now use as weights would remain unsupported at certain
distances from our earth. If we were to use such a body as a weight in a
clock, we would have to wind it down instead of up.
Because organic compounds are products of art, living beings find
themselves obliged to direct the physical forces to destroy these
compounds or restore them to their inorganic state more speedily than
these forces would have done if left unaided. The processes of decay,
performed by micro-organisms, are as necessary in the economy of life as
the reverse processes. Otherwise the earth would soon be so covered by
corpses that life must cease simply for lack of inorganic raw material.
It is true that we might imagine living beings as adapting their
organization to this condition and for some time directly utilizing the
accumulated stores of organic matter; but such periodical interruptions
and changes would disturb the continuity of life’s evolution. To avoid
this, there is no way open to restore equilibrium except the one in which
it is now done.
No effect, whatever its nature, can exist without cause; and further,
every effect must have a sufficient cause. If, therefore, we have
established that natural forces can no more produce organisms than
steam engines, we have also proved that these things would never have
come into existence if the organic forces had been left to themselves.
Neither organisms nor engines would exist, because they have no cause
in the material world. The products of art are due not only to other
causes, but the relationship between cause and effect is also different
with them from what it is with the products of nature. Every product of
nature has its cause in a previous condition of matter. The cause goes
before and the effect comes after in time. The connection between cause
and effect is so intimate and complete with regard to natural products,
that we may trace the series of occurrences backward and forward in time
without other limitations than those imposed by a deficient knowledge of
the qualities of matter. Such a connection between cause and effect has
been termed mechanical causality, which reigns without exception in the
material world.
Of entirely different kind and nature is the series of causes pertaining
to the production of objects of art. In their capacity of purpose they
are themselves the physical cause of all the work that precedes their
birth. When the product of art is finally ready, the effect has then gone
before the cause. Such a connection is called teleological causality in
contradistinction to the mechanical one, where the cause always precedes
the effect.
But although the product of art is the nearest cause of its own
production, it is not the primary one; it is itself the result, not of a
cause to be found in the material world, but of a _foreign_ interference
in the mechanical causality, and points therefore to a supernatural
ground which, by a closer investigation, will be found identical with a
living will. The will feels the want of other things than those which
natural forces can spontaneously produce. Natural products act as
incentives on the will, spur it to break through mechanical causality
so that physical laws by a judicious guidance may be forced to produce
artificial products that better satisfy the desires of the will. If
natural laws could comprehend and judge these things, they would consider
them all as miracles, whereas, from the point of view of the will, they
are so much the more natural as they are exact expressions of the needs
and desires of the will.
But not only the order of cause and effect, even the tie between the two
is entirely different in teleological causality from that in mechanical.
While the natural product is an effect that cannot fail to appear, the
product of art, on the contrary, is an effect that primarily never
could be expected, because it has no cause in the material world; but
further, if it is forthcoming, the tie between cause and effect is so
loose that such a product may be left and will remain in any stage of its
production. It may be just commenced, half ready, or nearly completed;
be better or worse, be a failure, and so on, whereas the natural product
springs forth of physical necessity from its cause and never can be
different from what it is.
Wills and physical forces then stand against each other as two
fundamentally and radically different causes. A will may neglect to
do what it ought to, may be idle, industrious, undecided; a physical
force cannot leave undone what it has to do, can never be called idle,
industrious or undecided.
That man is able to produce objects of art we have sufficient evidence in
material invention, from the simple stone-ax up to the most complicated
machines. But if man can create products of art he must himself be a
supernatural cause, as natural products produce nothing but their own
kind. And not only he but also the beings that build up his organism must
be supernatural causes, as we have seen that all organic matter _ipso
facto_ are products of art.
In all these different forms and species of products of art we possess,
therefore, boundless masses of obvious and visible evidence that life
is not a quality of matter. In order to break through the mechanical
causality and introduce into the material world effects which never could
be spontaneously forthcoming, life must have a supernatural origin, must
be a principle independent of matter.
By resuming the demonstration that the materialists had broken off, we
arrive therefore at the same conclusion that natural science had already
drawn before from external observation, and with which the question of
the nature of life-force is inseparably connected. The qualities of
matter itself demonstrate clearly that spontaneous generation never has
been, is not and never will be possible, and the tremendous labor spent
during centuries to prove this by external observation seems almost a
waste of time. We might as well pick out a table full of stones and sit
down expecting some of them to undertake a flight around the room, as to
expect living substance to come forth spontaneously from dead matter.
The intrinsic qualities of matter tell us that only hope for the former
occurrence can warrant faith in the latter.
We thus consider it demonstrated that Harvey’s formula is a universal
natural law and we may now draw its logical consequences: _Life is not a
material force; no living being can therefore arise from dead matter;
all life has a supernatural origin in a higher immaterial world_.