Chapter I.

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Life: Its True Genesis

By R. W. Wright

[Masoretic Hebrew.]--אֲׁשֶֽר זַרְעוׄ־בִל עַל־הָאָ֑רֶע׃.--

Οὗ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ χατὰ γένος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. [Septuagint.]

"Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is

upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]

Second Edition

1884

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

TO

ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.

OF CHESHIRE, CONN.

Contents.

Prefatory

Chapter I. Introductory.

Chapter II. Life--Its True Genesis.

Chapter III. Alternations of Forest Growths.

Chapter IV. The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.

Chapter V. Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.

Chapter VI. Distribution and Permanence of Species.

Chapter VII. What Is Life? Its Various Theories.

Chapter VIII. Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.

Chapter IX. Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.

Chapter X. Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.

Preface to Second Edition.

Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in

that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that

thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or

spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This

is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of

the tenth verse:

"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not

thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (_the earth_) bring forth

and bud (_not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth_), that it (_the

earth_) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater (_man being the

only sower of seed and eater of bread_): so shall my Word be (_the Word of

Life_) that goeth forth out of my mouth (_the mouth of the Lord_); it

shall not return unto me void (_i.e., lifeless_), but it shall accomplish

that which I (_the Lord Jehovah_) please, and it (_the living Word_) shall

prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six

hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,

and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall

come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle

tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that

shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come

and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,

"Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of

nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the

conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence

by the divine fiat.

In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on

this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.

In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of

Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in

history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such

volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a

flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but

on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,

and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as

vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon

as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and

the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.

There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than

in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most

remarkable formula is taken.

We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"

as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"

instead of God, in their philosophical writings.

As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after _Truth_ as it is to be

found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the temple of

science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful consideration. It is

only when they become dogmatic, and assert propositions that have no

foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe, that we propose to break a

lance at their expense, and lay bare their fallacies. We claim nothing

more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than we are willing and ready to

accord to them. Indeed, we would champion their right to be heard sooner

than we would our own, on the principle that it is our duty to be just to

others before we are generous to ourselves, or those of our own following.

But our Agnostic friends should remember that when they charge us with

being "dogmatic in science," the charge should be made good from a

scientific stand-point, and not merely by the bandying of words.

When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million

years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,

we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist

for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they

have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where

they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends

referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.

Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from

the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these

toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all

life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life

ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of

nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other

forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live

without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform

to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and

food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a

dead batrachian inside of one year.

This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality

between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science

finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this

riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim

there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let

the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth

these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon

any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.

The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike

Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,

and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest

boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large

force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the

characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,

sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by

the road-sides, and the _débris_ scraped into the centre of the road-beds;

the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside

rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break

the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones

etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in

length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that

they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no

trace of a mother toad in connection with them.

The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the

early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may

propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But

they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for

any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no

circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks

in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens

appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,

is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted

by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have

made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake

Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the

sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as

taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by

the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.

What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them

almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are

inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited

the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,

where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.

It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion

of the town.

The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source

of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout

in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn

he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that

expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and

on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his

enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,

not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the

blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing

out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common _Rana_

family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in

similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the

reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been

apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.

Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet

into the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water

secured. We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as

well as at some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they

wanted, remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog,

originating therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would

make his way to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well

enough as one of the _Rana_ family. It was only to our more intelligent

neighbors (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we

stopped to explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it

appears, whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are

equally conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water

from our cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm

sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting.

The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing

their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young

wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the

open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch

out into mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest

study, as well as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the

proper time they come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable

modification in their structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the

tormenting little insects that they are during the summer and autumn

months in our Northern climate. The object of the covered barrel was to

ascertain whether we could reach the conditions favorable for the

development of this little pest of the _Culex_ family, independently of

the eggs of the insect itself. This required some patience and not a

little care. We knew that an egg dropped through the interstices of the

netting would sink to the bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as

every scientist understanding the process well knows. It must be floated

on the water at first, or until it reaches the point of development into

a wiggler. The first step in the process of its life is as cunningly

devised as the second, and the second as the third, until the

full-fledged mosquito is reached.

All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the

experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our

demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the

covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of

harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the

water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of

their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable

world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and

we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by

Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished

in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an

acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of

the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a

convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than

ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he

may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,

for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this

question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy

now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.

Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show

that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we

have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our

mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from

little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and

knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk

about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"

especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain

knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned

Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with

the same becoming courtesy.

In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled

"Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a

more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.

Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any

other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in

the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so

conspicuously in the historic page.

When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young

frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was

operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with

us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these

batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our

highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose

that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the

earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all

vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did

in the beginning.

One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that

scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms

have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence

diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific

centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the

environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like

living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and

thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as

their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in

pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict

went forth.

As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of

life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India

Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural

_habitat_ of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that

the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the

extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is

manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the

common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller

mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish,

as we have said, a natural _habitat_ for the oyster, and as the salt

sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long

thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without

the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped

along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will

be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and

not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any,

locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale

the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters

from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that

these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing

conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes

its appearance.

There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to

another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale

from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in

nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During

the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their

appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the

previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them

than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in

bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they

will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does

not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a

dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt

of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that

acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of

out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May

and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those

months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is

specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.

Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the

University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished

for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent

as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to

the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in

the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications

in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier

periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend

strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical

text; as, for instance, the _Trilobites_, occurring so abundantly in what

is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance,

whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil,

characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much

in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the

presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of

the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of

these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: "It took long

enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked

the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest

scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.

All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been

governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "_similia

similibus gignuntur_"--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains

universally. The _Graptolites_, occurring in the bituminous shales of the

Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to

which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of

natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the

fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible

teaches us.

When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of

minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the

Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible

rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a

great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the

induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,

he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun

several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will

be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True

Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.

When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less

than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally

true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had

spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our

command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation

of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and

study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as

every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense

amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his

paper on the _Archæopterix_, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a

case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing

a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was

trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every

one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.

It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if

not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we

have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for

the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological

strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings

upon the Matterhorn!

Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says

be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in

the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power

of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at

least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to

themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power

that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and

the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other

mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the

"Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of

the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that

period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in

physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were

expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our

materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,

and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it

took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data

we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in

which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at

least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or

defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?

Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted

English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and

pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When

Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering

Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the

other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the

twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent

events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to

place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"

unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,

is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it

appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.

When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,

of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation

of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other

institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both

know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first

command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,

not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles

of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or

power of life in matter.

That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth

their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now

asserts they originally came from.

And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts

thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and

earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis

changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine

energy intervene!

"Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after

our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the

material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into

his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is

the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no

word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited

sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander

purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the

light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances

with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this

millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!

In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between

the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge

over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass

it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It

takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him

where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his

higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material

dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.

Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly

Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead

of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.

We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and

conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career

for good or for evil.

We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of

our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so

doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant

at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to _The

National Quarterly Review_, for the captious manner in which it treated us

after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its

two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a

class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and

enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of

criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never

thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put

several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist

had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously

as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had

handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural

science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,

materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare

the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive

adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not

so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other

respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were

content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the

fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the

waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests

of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first

and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive

Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained

by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of

unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism

demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"

was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the

writer's own face.

But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged

in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently

indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to

our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as _The National

Quarterly Review_ speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate

friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.

If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;

if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter

for them to regret, and for us to deplore.

To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our

thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in

what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our

thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:

"Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,

Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow

With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been

All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,

Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain

The long night through, and wake at early dawn

To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"

R. W. Wright.

West Cheshier, Conn., _Oct_. 12, 1883.

Prefatory.

The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the

public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal

introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work

may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of

salutation untouched.

The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has

traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous

and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less

conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: _That the

primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living

things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that

they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and

wherever the necessary environing conditions exist_.

The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in

the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in

the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.

The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of

Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true

Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the

biblical and scientific scholar.

In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show

that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception

named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that

we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more

imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall

into the same lines of incidence in human thought.

Science has long taught that the _absence_ of necessary physiological

conditions results everywhere in the _disappearance_ of vital phenomena;

by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the _presence_ of

these necessary conditions results everywhere in the _appearance_ of vital

phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe, where it

is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak, after

each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many thousand

years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the pine paved

the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the beech. Neither

sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the fittest" have

anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of either. Each

yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal principle of life)

was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the earth, and made its

appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the presence of natural

seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions favored.

And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in

the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak

forests where pine have been cleared away, and _vice versa_, in some parts

of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled. So

with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,

over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last

glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will

find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance

without the possible intervention of natural seeds.

The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the

Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred

years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was

undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third

century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch

roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before

them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time

of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to

the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel

points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now

subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.

According to Irenæus, this Greek version was rendered at the request of

Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian library,

and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and Hellenistic

scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that day,--employed

upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount authority to

our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the highest and most

conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and the "new genesis

of life" we derive therefrom.

Σπέρμα (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost an identical

signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "_germ_ of anything,"

or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives

or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of

"seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no

plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which

seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more

comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of

life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used

it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms

σπερματ´κοὶ γόγοι expressing "the _laws of generation contained in

matter_"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual

connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let

the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree

yielding fruit after his kind, _whose germinal principle of life, each in

itself after its kind, is upon the earth_"

We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most

complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better

scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the

Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.

But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.

The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true

rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal

development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to

do with the '_odium theologicum_?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both

theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and

agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great

scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of

nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in

the Hebrew _Hagiographa_, of what less value is it to science than if it

had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the

inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to

science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.

Herbert Spencer?

Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with

all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no

longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every

operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific

speculation to pry. We know what nature _does_, or may know it by the

proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more

than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at

the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,

science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,

without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down

an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood

tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to

land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth

bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day

as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of

endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It

requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the

oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from

primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal

organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian

gemmule, thousands of years ago.

He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a

thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as

our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified

theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,

rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,

transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,

_molécules organiques_, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated

"life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulæ,

with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen

or twenty years.

Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific

speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true

and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,

motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to

the public. [1]

R. W. Wright.

West Cheshire, Conn.

True Genesis.

Chapter I.

Introductory.

It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and

speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly

tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that

utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical

conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally

prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the

current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal

rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our

more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and

speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations

have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material

substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly

persistent elements in the universe--_Matter_ and _Motion_. Everything

else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or else

essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their

theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the

two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate

conclusions respecting matter.

Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,

and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they

claim, of one and the same force in the universe--_Motion_, With the

exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,

ever active and reactive agency.

Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism

more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes

or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere

postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force

of molecules.

Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.

Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has

unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last

stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a

special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the

transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does

exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of

its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,

because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally

averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."

And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly

speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are

among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the

last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and

who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that

the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,

as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and

ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of

the London University College. Had he spent less time over this

dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of

life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not

mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation

of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a

non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at

the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the

beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?

or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of

all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, _de

novo_? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly

allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied

to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to

provoke both incredulity and derision.

The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past

professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services

as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the

most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces

of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,

and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's

enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and

laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and

putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;

cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one

dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and

mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle

the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in

nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say

nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more

conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.

But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any

greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting

either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their

logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that

only a negative conclusion shall follow.

"Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.

Life is neither matter nor motion,

Therefore: Life is not indestructible.

This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the

distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the

incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that

neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,

thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more

illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say

that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,

without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to

embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either

have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence

to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of

such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be

realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows

that this conscious _ego_--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes

attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the

order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we

are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the

theological conception of a God--the one supreme _Ego_ of the

universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as

apprehensive intelligence, is derived.

We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the

order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are

constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent

inductions:--

1. Cause must exist before effect.

2. Without some vital principle, therefore, preëxisting as a cause, there

can be no life-manifestation.

3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.

4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.

5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as

an effect?

6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself

both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an

incongruent and conflictive judgment.

7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,

whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.

8. Hence Life, either as a preëxisting cause or vital agency, must precede

both animal and vegetal organism.

Again:--

9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that

which is produced by an operating cause.

10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it

as an operating cause.

11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,

must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating

cause before there is any produced effect.

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 quantity," 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 assume 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 quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital

force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding

God--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 God 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 passage 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 compass, in ancient or modern manuscript 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 space, 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 space.

2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important

suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--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 space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the

universe from "the spirit of God,"--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 God 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 antithetical 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 God, 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God as breathing into man "the breath of

life," and he became a "living soul,"

8. The Bible Genesis represents God 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 God 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 God from the

universe, by assigning 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

God"--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 antithetical 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, cum 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 illustrious 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 assert, 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 analogical 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 assimilating, 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 homogeneous 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 Shelley, 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 worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did

the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive

assurance 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, grasses, 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 assume 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 quantitive 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 God." And this is the grand corner-stone of all

religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, 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 assailed 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 spaces.

We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,

Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their

experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the

purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in

the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers

after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of

investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions

against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value

whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting

"life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is

necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion

are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of

facts only, and the latter entirely on _pre_conceived and _pre_judicial

notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no

objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to

the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set

themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular

potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we

must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the

theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is

God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the

heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote

of the universe:--

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the soul."

The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as

science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more

household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"

more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less

dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes

for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer

represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating

the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still

industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater

number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this

gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual

controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable

statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as

scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he

has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic

achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.

Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of

science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that

this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between

materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason

why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim

of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the

slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did

more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than

Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing

to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but

refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that

man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.

When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so

much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of

Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,

between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense

and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated

primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from

whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have

arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we

shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a

thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the

maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could

span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which

no daring mortal could ever pass.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the

necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful

construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the

"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method

as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he

would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the

continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in

the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical

manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards

advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes

of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living

organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a

foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of

either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in

this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional

variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid

substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological

differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and

re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more

exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated

potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to

abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,

and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.

The bridge will never be built.