Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life
seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately
not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject
their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of
super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials
that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of
heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100°
C--212° F) they assume that all living organisms perish, especially when
the solutions containing them have been kept, for the space of fifteen or
twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the light of all
the experiments which have been made in this direction, there is some
doubt as to the entire correctness of their assumption. That many, if not
most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100° C, there is little
or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more tenacious of
life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is equally
unquestionable.
M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are
capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature
of 120° to 125° C. (248-257° F), while the same spores entirely lose their
germinating power after an exposure for half an hour or more to a slightly
higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on "The Action of Heat
on Protoplasmic Life," recently published in the proceedings of the Royal
Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are capable of resisting the
action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300° F, although exposed
therein for half an hour or more. But none of these crucial tests, however
diverse in experimental results, really touch the all-important question
in controversy. They all relate either to living organisms, or to the
seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living indestructible
"germs"--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth itself.
We use the term "vital unit" in the same restricted sense in which the
materialists speak of "chemical units," "morphological units," etc., which
they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have
no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility
by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies,
between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the
conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the
other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less
obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by
Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that assimilates or aggregates
protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism
in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
Morphological cells are not therefore "units," considered as the least of
any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more
homogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions
give rise to different morphological cells, as differently constituted
soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in
any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological
character of the infusoria appearing therein.[28] The cells are living
organisms springing from vital units, and can no more manifest themselves
independently of these units than life can manifest itself independently
of an actual organism. And they make their appearance in the proper
environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its primordial germ or
vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the soil. Everywhere
the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the plant or tree
precedes the natural seeds it bears.
This is not only the logical order, but the exact scientific method of
vital manifestation and growth. In this truth lies the whole mystery of
vegetal and animal life as hitherto manifested on our globe, with the
single exception of man whose crowning distinction it was to receive "a
living soul." This may be rejected as a scientific statement, but its
verification will appear in the very act of its rejection. Pry as deeply
as we may into the _arcana_ of nature in search of exact scientific truth,
and we shall ultimately land in one or the other of these
propositions,--either that nature was originally endowed with some occult
and unknown power "to bring forth," which power is either continuously
inherent or continuously imparted, or else "specific creation" was the
predetermined plan and purpose, with no higher or more specialized animal
or vegetal forms than were specifically created in the beginning.
Otherwise, we are inevitably forced back, by our mental processes, which
we cannot resist, upon an effect without a cause--a physical law of the
universe without any conceivable law-giver--an all-pervading,
all-energizing principle of matter which must have existed as a cause
infinitely anterior to its first effect. And this is forcing language into
such crazy and paralytic conclusions as to utterly destroy its efficiency
as a vehicle of thought.
To conceive of the existence of the universe, or of any possible law that
may be operative therein, without an adequate antecedent cause, is as
metaphysically impossible as to conceive of substance without form, space
without extension, or a God who has been superceded in the universe by the
operation of his own laws. For if the world-ordaining and world-arranging
intelligence of the universe has ceased to ordain and arrange,--if all
things therein have been left to the operation of fixed and eternally
unchangeable laws--then no further supervisional direction is required on
the part of either an infinite or a finite intelligence, and our idea of a
God must disappear in the paramount induction of a universe which has
successfully risen up in insurrection against its own maker and lawgiver,
if it has not remorselessly consigned him to some inconceivable limbo
outside of the universe itself. But this Titanic, and worse than satanic,
insurrection on the part of a universe of matter and motion, is only the
conjectural coinage of the human brain--the wild supposition hazarded by
the materialistic mind--and fortunately has no conceivable counterpart
outside of it.
But the palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its
overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human
mind--as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable
uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or
the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. And nature furnishes no
greater clue to the one set of phenomena than the other. For when we say
that bodies act one upon another by the force of gravity, we are no nearer
an explication of the force itself, than we should be were we to allege
any corresponding manifestation on the part of the human mind. Kant says;
"We cannot conceive of the existence of matter without the forces of
attraction and repulsion--the conflict of two elementary forces in the
universe;" much less can we have any conception of the elementary forces
themselves. Science can, therefore, assign no more conclusive reason for
overlooking psychical manifestations than physical phenomena. Nor is the
one set of phenomena any more marvellous in its manifestations than the
other. They may both furnish food for speculative thought and inquiry, and
yet the nearer we get to the ultimate implications of either, the more
completely are we lost in Professor Tyndall's "primordial haze," from
which he assumes that the universe, and all the phenomenal manifestations
therein, originally came.
But however rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the
scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that
will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of
God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical
universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with
the former, in all its conceivable relations, that it can no more exist
independently of its correlative, than matter can exist independently of
space, or time independently of eternity. [29]
According to this view of Leibnitz, all living organisms have their own
essence, or essential qualities and characteristics. They have been from
all eternity in the "Divine Intendment," and can undergo no changes or
modifications which shall make them essentially different from what they
were in the beginning, or are now. This is not only true of the "germs"
that are "in themselves upon the earth," but of every living thing,
whether lying within or beyond the telescopic or microscopic limits. As a
law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the
order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to
the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. But
that this continuous chain is dependent on mere physical changes or
manifestations, is a logical induction utterly incapable of being
exhibited in scientific formulæ. The higher and more satisfactory
induction is that which places cause before effect, the Maker before the
made, the Creator before the creature, and so on, in the analogical order,
till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of
organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a
point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to
give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of
causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in
which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and
potentialities of the universe once lay latent, may answer the logical
necessities of the "Evolution" theory, but will never satisfy the
inductive processes of a Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Newton.
Professor Tyndall, in speaking of his "fiery-cloud" theory, says: "Many
who hold the hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent to the
position (his position) that at the present moment all our philosophy, all
our poetry, all our science, all our art,--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and
a Da Vinci--are potential in the fires of the sun." But, to be consistent
in their inductions, they should proclaim themselves sun-worshippers at
once, and ascribe to that transcendent luminary all the potentialities of
a universe
"Fresh-teeming from the hand of God."
But what possible advantage, we would ask, can this physical hypothesis of
life have over that which ascribes to God the issues of all life in the
universe, from the highest to the lowest living organism? We can
positively conceive of none but that of placing the cosmological cart
before the horse, and so harnessing "cause and effect" _in tandem_, that
the latter shall uniformly precede the former in the chain of logical
induction. As a dialectical feat, in exhibiting the higher possibilities
of logic, it may have its advantages in subordinating the facts of science
to the higher illuminations of fancy, and thus resting the basis of
reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human
mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday,
nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are
almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope,
although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and
proportions of that scientific toy.
Professor Bastian, in considering the heterogenetic phenomena of "living
matter," is obliged to fall back, near the end of his great work, on "the
countless myriads of living units which have been evolved (?) in the
different ages of the world's history." But by what process a "vital
unit" can be _evolved_, he does not condescend to tell us. He has no
"primordial formless fog" to fall back upon as has Professor Tyndall, nor
can he imagine anything beyond the least of possible conceptions in a
chemical, morphological, or vital unit. A "unit" can neither be evolved
nor involved; it admits of no square, no multiple, no differentiation; it
is simply the ever-potent unit of "organic polarity," by which it
multiplies effects, but can never be multiplied itself. The chief fault
that we have to find with the London University professor is that he
confounds a morphological cell with a morphological unit, and insists
upon drawing unwarrantable conclusions therefrom. His "countless myriads
of living units" are all well enough in their way. That they exist in the
earth, and are constantly developed into innumerable multitudes of living
organisms, of almost inconceivable variety, in both the animal and
vegetal world, is true, as he half-reluctantly admits in almost the
identical language we here use.
And he also admits that morphological cells, when once formed, continue to
grow by their own individual power or inherent tendency. But before they
can manifest any such inherent tendency, they must be developed from the
vital units that lie back of them, and on which their manifestation
unquestionably depends. The only doubt that can possibly exist on this
point is, that the process of development cannot be determined by
microscopic examination. But we may as well assume the presence of vital
units in the case of dynamical aggregates, as for Professor Bastian to
insist upon crystalline units in the case of statical aggregates or
crystals. Both processes, in their initial stages of development, lie
beyond the reach of human scrutiny, and all that we know, or possibly can
know, is, that certain inorganic conditions are favorable for the
development of crystals, as certain organic conditions are favorable for
the development of morphological cells. Beyond this Professor Bastian
knows nothing--we know nothing.
Professor Beale, in his recent work on "the Mystery of Life"--one that is
now justly attracting very wide attention--says: "Between the two sets of
phenomena, physical and vital, not the faintest analogy can be shown to
exist. The idea of a particle of muscular or nerve tissue being formed by
a process akin to crystallization, appears ridiculous to any one who has
studied the two classes of phenomena, or is acquainted with the structure
of these tissues." And he quietly, yet effectively, ridicules the idea
that the ultimate molecules of matter--substantially the same matter, in
fact--have the power to arrange themselves, independently of vital
tendency, alternately into a dog-cell or a man-cell, according to the
specific direction they may take, or the incidence of conditions they may
undergo, in their primary movement. And for the benefit of Professor
Beale, behind whose "bioplasts," we place the "vital unit"--not a variable
but a constant unit--we would have him bear in mind (what he so well
knows) that the finest fibres that go to make up these tissues lie quite
beyond the microscopic limit in their interlaced and spirally-coiled
reticulations, so that nothing can be predicated of their ultimate
contexture, any more than of the ultimate distribution of matter itself.
He has himself traced these wonderfully minute nerve-ramifications under
glasses of the highest magnifying power, and knows that their ultimate
distribution cannot be reached. Let him come out then, as the ablest
vitalist now living, and boldly assert the presence of the man-_unit_ and
the dog-_unit,_ instead of falling back on his bioplastic spinners and
weavers of tissue, which are only the servants and willing workers of the
one integral unit, or life-directing force, within. It is far more
rational, and, at the same time, more accordant with strict scientific
methods, to attribute these muscular and nerve reticulations to a single
direct cause, than to a multitude of secondary causes.
There is a world-wide difference between the dog-_ego_ and the man-_ego;_
but the physical differences are not by any means the greatest. The
bioplastic spinners and weavers work as obediently for the one
master-_ego_ as the other. They never stop to inquire how far they shall
differentiate this vital tissue or that, or in what direction even they
shall work. Not a thread is spun nor a shuttle thrown that is not directed
by the one head-webster of vital tissue. These obedient bioplasts
determine nothing, direct nothing. Each works in his own cell as
obediently as a galley-slave. All specific modifications, all determinate
movements, all molecular arrangements, all multiplications of bioplastic
force, are the work of the one vital webster, or principle of life,
within--that which shapes all, directs all, determines all. And this is
true from the first or embryological inception of the dog-unit or "germ,"
until the real occupant of the dog-tenement dismisses his bioplastic
weavers, and lies down to die. And so of all vital units. Each determines
its own structural form, and unchangeably retains it to the end, even to
the slightest impression of a scar inflicted years and years before. The
occupant of this dog-mansion has dismissed one set of bioplastic weavers
after another; has thrown aside this spun tissue and that warp and woof of
woven texture, time and time again, so that the dog of to-day is not the
same _physical_ dog of a year ago; and yet he has the same affection for
his master, carries with him the same scar received twenty years before in
the chase, gives the same glad bark of welcome as his owner nears home,
exhibits the same characteristic wag in his tail, and, lying down to
sleep, dreams of the once happy chase in which he is no longer able to
engage. This continuous presence of the same dog, through all these twenty
years of physical change--the old dog reappearing in the new, a dozen
times over--is what we mean by the constantly differentiating yet
undifferentiated "dog-unit."
Those who attempt to bisect this vital unit, divide it up into one
fractional part after another, until it shall represent a million
bioplastic workers in as many different cells, are committing the same
sort of folly--in principle at least, if not in practice--as that which
led the simple-minded daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, in the
expectation of boiling the old bioplasts into new, and then, by the
cunning aid of Medea, who directed the operation, reuniting them into the
one Peliastic-unit they so much delighted to honor. But this first and
only recorded attempt at differentiating a vital unit disastrously failed,
as the reader of ancient myths well knows, although the experiment was
conducted by the most careful and loving hands. The necessary chemical
re-agents to reproduce life, as well as the necessary processes of
producing it _de novo_ have not yet been ascertained, nor is it likely
they ever will be. And herein lies the most marked distinction between
crystallizable matter and living substance.
And yet there is no evidence that the vital principle perishes in the
destruction of its temporary organism. It is not the material seed that
germinates, but the vital principle it contains, bursting forth from its
environment into newness of life. All that can be alleged of either boiled
or calcined seeds is, that the material substances of which they were
composed are so changed in their chemical constituents, or molecular
adjustment, that they are no longer capable of developing, or being
developed, into a living organism. "Principles never die," and this is as
true of the vital principles in nature, as those obtaining in ethics and
morals. Were it possible to restore the exact chemical conditions and
constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more
doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give
forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of
spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically
prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in
the seed, but the vital principle therein--that continuously imparted to
nature from the great vital fountain of the universe--which burgeons forth
into life whenever and wherever the required conditions obtain.
In proof of this statement, we might instance any number of cases where
recently abandoned brick-yards and other clayey excavations, were situated
at considerable distances from any natural water-courses, or fish-stocked
ponds, from which spawn could have been derived, and yet these excavations
have no sooner been filled with permanently standing rain water, than
certain small fishes of the _Cyprinidae_ and other families, have made
their appearance therein.[30] Nobody has thought of stocking these
standing pools of water with the fish in question, nor has there been any
surface overflow to account for their presence, nor any other apparent
means of transportation, if we except the fish-catching birds, and they
generally swallow their food in the water or on the nearest tree to the
point of capture. Any theory accounting for the presence of spawn is,
therefore, out of the question. This spawn must have traversed hard clay
deposits for the distance of half a mile or more to make their appearance
in these waters. The only possible explanation of this class of phenomena,
and they are by no means infrequent, is to be found in "favoring
conditions" and the "presence of vital units." They are primordial
manifestations of life, and such as would have made their appearance in
any corresponding latitude of the southern hemisphere, under the same
favoring conditions.
And this is true of all living organisms from the lowest morphological
cell, in the ichthyologic world, to the highest and lordliest conifer that
grows. Their spawn and seeds are perishable by heat, but the vital
principle that organizes them is as imperishable in one element as
another. No seven-times heated furnace, much less the experimental flasks
of the physicist, will affect a vital principle of nature any more than a
May-morning puff of the east wind would shake Olympus. And all the
countless myriads of vital units in nature are now manifesting themselves
in animal and vegetal forms, under favoring conditions, the same as in
those far-distant epochs of the world's history when a more exuberant
vegetation prevailed, if not a more abounding animal life. The same
persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been
present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the
detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the
dews, and the sunlight. Then the earth commenced "to bring forth the
grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-trees yielding fruit, after
his kind;" and in their growth was laid the foundation of animal life.
Whether there was any audible or inaudible command of God uttered at the
time, is not the question. It is the _fact_ of vital growth that we are
after, and not the command. The geologic records attest the fact, as well
as the ever-acting vital law; and it is enough for us to know, with sturdy
old Richard Hooker, that all law--and especially all _vital_ law--"has her
seat in the bosom of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world."
Professor Beale, while resolutely combating the physical hypothesis of
life, is not a little unfortunate in his use of scientific terms. He is
constantly using those of "living matter" and "dead matter," as if they
contained no fatal concession to the materialists, with which to
completely overthrow his own ultimate conclusions as to life. For he gains
nothing by merely substituting "bioplasm" and "bioplasts" for "protoplasm"
and "plastide particles." The essential plasma in both cases is the same,
and behind each lies the vital unit or principle therein manifested--the
invisible, indestructible germ or ZRA of the Bible genesis. Living
organisms come, of course, from this essential plasma, but without an
elementary principle or vital unit therein, there would be no "bioplasts,"
in the sense in which Professor Beale uses this term. These bioplasts are
living organisms which take up nutrient matter and convert it by
assimilation into tissues, nerves, fibres, bones, etc.--into the higher
and more complex organs that go to make up living structure. This
mysterious transmutation of one thing into another, as organic matter into
living organisms, is due to a vitally implanted principle, not to these
little bioplasts, or mere epithelial and other tools with which the vital
principle works. To apply the term "living matter" to the tools with which
a living structure is built up, is to lose sight of the master-mechanic
using them for an apparently intelligent purpose. The microscope may
demonstrate that these little bioplasts throb--have life; but there is no
intelligent purpose manifested by them except as they are moved by an
unseen hand that conclusively directs the whole structural work--builds up
the one complete symmetrical structure, not its thousand independent parts
having no relation to a general plan. The future lord and occupant of the
mansion is presumably present, and if he uses tools that "throb and have
life," it is because everything he touches is quickened into life that it
may be the more obedient to his will. If this structure be the
soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which
fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the
embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored
"dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity."
Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his
theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is
beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts')
of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of
organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must
except to not less than three points in as many lines of his
over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting
the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of
reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor
Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal
matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at
once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any
intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails
anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter
or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in
an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of
tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof
of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes
"dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve
fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no
endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic
limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these
ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers
sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of
nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph
Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have
been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the
highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve
force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are
bound to except.
Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
well as meaning.
The third objection to Mr. Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it
is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are
millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which
Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a
biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a
comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its
specific work is assigned. Now, these germinal points, or bioplasts, in
each of these myriads of cells, work, not separately and independently,
like so many oysters in their respective shells, but harmoniously and
together, as if under the supervisional direction of one supreme architect
and builder. This builder is that one elementary principle of life,
appertaining to each specific individual as a species, with which nature
was endowed from the beginning, and which, in the case of man, was a
direct emanation from Deity. It is this vital principle manifesting itself
_in_ all living organisms, not _from_ them; directing Professor Beale's
"bioplastic weavers," not directed by them; availing itself of necessary
plasmic conditions, if not giving rise to them in the first instance;
observing no developmental processes by which one form of life laps over
upon another, and following no order but that of universal harmony in the
Divine intendment. There is struggle and rivalry for existence, even among
the same classes, orders, genera, and species, and the smallest and
weakest must give place to the largest and strongest everywhere, and _vice
versa_, as Time, the greatest of all rodents, gnaws away at the mystical
tree of life. But in every living organism, from the lowest and simplest
to the highest and most complex, all bioplastic spinners of filamentous
tissue, all plastide weavers of membranous or spun matter, all epithelial
bobbin-runners, and other anatomical helpers and workers, perform their
respective tasks under the special supervision we have named, that is,
under the higher unit of life. They all work for the advancement and
well-being of the higher organism of which they form a component and
necessarily subordinate part.
The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm
and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color
from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no
evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life,
wherein lies the "mystery of mysteries." It is an important discovery so
far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher
mystery within the temple built by God than another may attain to by the
accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some
other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is
not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being
carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness
and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has
made _his_ happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other
equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit
upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent
direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the
shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells.
But decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale,
although one confidently re-affirmed by our "Boston Monday Lecturer," is
that which makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only "living matter." We have
already referred to the phrases "living matter" and "non-living matter" as
altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than
half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the
vitalists to take a "back seat" in the discussions now going forward as to
the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical,
and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that
Professor Beale speaks of "formed matter," as if it were a peculiar
something--a sort of _tertium quid_--between living and non-living matter.
But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his carmine
solutions is the "only living matter," and hence asserts, inferentially at
least, that all other matter, in any and every living organism, is "dead
matter." But we may just as confidently aver that no matter is living in
any vital organism which has not been assimilated and built up into living
membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case of man) to his will,
as well as performing the autonomous functions of plants and the lower
animals. For all these membranous tissues are innumerably thronged with
bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the purposes of obedience to
man's will, or of performing any autonomous function, but simply to supply
the tissues with the necessary nutrient matter to make up for the constant
waste that is going on in a healthy living organ. This waste is very much
greater than has heretofore been supposed, so that the man or animal of
to-day may be an entirely distinct and separate one, considered
materially, from that of a year or more ago. And this averment would have
a decided advantage over Professor Beale's, since, in meeting a friend, we
might be certain that four-fifths of him at least was alive, while the
other one-fifth was industriously at work to keep him alive, instead of a
stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be, upon the street. Besides, it
would obviate the necessity, on the part of the vitalists, of giving
themselves four-fifths away to the materialists, as Professor Beale
virtually does in the argument.
The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its
life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its
exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where
are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only
weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful
plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of
song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures
and brilliant _roulades_, as if the little vocalist had caught its
inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts
now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The
occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has
dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay
to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No
chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or
interfere with the occupations assigned them. The machinery that ran their
looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to
ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate
threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and
weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat,
nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of
any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has
suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy
hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic
weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the "bright gem instinct with
music," is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. _Where_ it is, not
man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is
uplifted by inspiration, that--
"The soul of music never dies,
Nor slumbers in its shell;
'Tis sphere-descended from the skies,
And thence returns to dwell."