primary act repeating itself eternally in the centre. The universe is a
rotating globe of matter.
"There is no dead matter; it is alive through its being, through the
Eternal that is in it. Matter has no existence in itself, but it is the
Eternal only that exists in it. Every thing is God that is there, and
without God there is absolutely nothing.
"Every thing that is is material. Now, however, there is nothing that is
not; consequently there is every where nothing immaterial.
"Fire is the totality of ether, is God manifested in his totality.
"Every thing that is has originated out of fire; every thing is only
cooled, rigidified fire.
"God being in himself is gravity; acting, self-emergent light; both
together, or returning into himself, heat.
"God only is monocentral. The world is the bicentral God, God the
monocentral world, which is the same with the monas and dyas.
Self-consciousness is a living ellipse.
"God is a threefold trinity; at first the eternal, then the ethereal, and
finally the terrestrial, where it is completely divided.
"The symbolical doctrine of the colors is correct according to the
philosophy of nature. Red is fire, love--Father. Blue is air, truth, and
belief--Son. Green is water, formation, hope--Ghost. These are the three
cardinal virtues. Yellow is earth, the immovable, inexorable falsity, the
only vice--Satan. There are three virtues, but only one vice. A result
obtained by physio-philosophy, whereof pneumato-philosophy as yet augurs
nothing.
"The primary mucus, out of which every thing organic has been created, is
the sea mucus.
"The whole sea is alive. It is a fluctuating, ever self-elevating, and
ever self-depressing organism.
"If the organic fundamental substance consist of infusoria, so must the
whole organic world originate from infusoria. Plants and animals can be
only metamorphoses of infusoria. No organism has consequently been created
of larger size than an infusorial point; whatever is larger has not been
created, but developed.
"The mind, just as the body, must be developed out of these animals,
(infusoria.) The human body has been formed by an extreme separation of
the neuro-protoplasmic or mucous mass; so must the human mind be a
separation, a memberment of infusorial sensation. The highest mind is an
anatomized or dismembered mesmerism, each member whereof has been
constituted independent in itself.
"The liver is the soul in a state of sleep, the brain is the soul active
and awakening.
"Circumspection and forethought appear to be the thoughts of the bivalve
mollusca, and snails.
"Gazing upon a snail, one believes that he finds the prophesying goddess
sitting upon the tripod. What majesty is in a creeping snail, what
reflection, what earnestness, what timidity, and yet at the same time what
firm confidence! Surely a snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering
deeply within itself."
It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon mind to believe that a man who could
write thus was not out of his senses. Yet Oken is an eminent physiologist,
and has made, it is said, important discoveries in respect to the cranial
homologies, which have been developed in Professor Owen's work on the
Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton. Nay, Oken declares himself to have
written his Physio-philosophy "in a kind of inspiration"--from what world
the religious man might be in doubt.
These extravagant notions show what is the natural tendency of the law
hypothesis. Yet it does not necessarily convert a man into an atheist. And
if any of its advocates declare themselves Theists, and even Christians,
we need not regard them as hypocrites, though we may consider them as in
an eminently dangerous position; and that, when they shall act
consistently, they will swing off into utter irreligion. But my arguments
against the hypothesis will be based on the position that _it is not
sustained by facts_; and this is the second position of my lecture.
The nebular hypothesis is a part of the foundation on which the doctrine
of creation by law rests. And the high scientific reputation of its
author, as well as its apparent coincidence with some of the deductions of
geology respecting the earliest condition of the earth, have made
philosophers look upon it with considerable favor. Yet very few have been
ready to give it implicit credence. And of late the most plausible
evidence in its favor seems to be fast vanishing away. The ablest
mechanicians are unable to see how a rotary motion should be produced in
nebulous matter by refrigeration; or, if this be assumed, how the
successive portions, detached by superior centrifugal force, should form
spherical masses. But a still more formidable objection lies in the fact
that, as improvements are made in telescopes, one and another of the
nebulae, on which the hypothesis rests, have been resolved into stars; and
the presumption hence arising is very strong that all are resolvable. In
the present aspect of the subject, no sagacious philosopher would dare to
rest even an hypothesis upon the unresolved nebulae. If, however, the
nebular hypothesis were shown to be true, it would prove nothing in regard
to the production of animals and plants by mere law, without the special
agency of the Deity.
The essential and inherent vitality of some kinds of matter is another
doctrine on which this hypothesis rests. "In vain," says Bory St. Vincent,
"has matter been considered as eminently brute. Many observations prove
that, if it is not all active, by its very nature, a part of it is
essentially so; and the presence of this, operating according to certain
laws, is able to produce life in an agglomeration of the molecules; and
since these laws will always be imperfectly known, it will at least be
rash to maintain that an infinite intelligence did not impose them; since
they are manifested by their results."--_Dictionnaire Classique
d'Histoire Naturelle_, art. _Materie_.
The "observations" to which this writer refers to sustain his hypothesis
are those which had been made upon certain vegetable infusions, which, in
certain circumstances, exhibited minute particles in motion, apparently by
vital forces. These were called _monads_, and were not supposed to be
distinct animals, but only atoms, ready to be organized. The more modern
and accurate researches of Ehrenberg and others, however, have shown,
beyond all doubt, that these monads are true animals, the minutest of all
living beings hitherto discovered. Not less than twenty-six species of
them have been described and figured by microscopists, the smallest of
which never exceeds the twelve thousandth of an inch in diameter.
The vegetable physiologists have described certain peculiar motions in the
minute vessels of plants, that might readily be regarded as matter
essentially vital. I refer to what they call _rotation_ and _cyclosis_.
But these are never seen save in the living plant; and, therefore, seem
dependent on the general life of the vegetable.
There is, however, danger of mistaking certain motions of the particles of
matter, by chemical agency, for the effect of vitality. A curious example
is thus described by Ehrenberg, which was discovered by Professor
Bornsdorff. "If a solution of the chloride of aluminum be dropped into a
solution of potassa, by the alternate precipitation and solution of the
aluminum, in the excess of the alkali, an appearance will be given to the
drop of aluminate matter, by the chemical changes and reactions which take
place, as if the _Amoeba diffluens_ were actually present, both as to
its form and evolutions, and will seem to be alive. Such appearance is
considered by its able discoverer as bearing the same relationship to the
real animalcule as a doll, or a figure moved by mechanism, does to a
living child."
We see, then, that the supports on which rests the doctrine of the
essential vitality of matter, give way before better instruments and more
careful research. Another statement, however, of much higher pretensions,
has lately been made, and on no mean authority. Able electricians declare
that, by passing currents of galvanism through solutions of silicate or
ferrocyanate of potassa, or some analogous substance, after a time,
sometimes several years, numerous small insects have been developed,
belonging to the _acari_ family.
These experiments appear to have been conducted with fairness and skill;
and that the insects showed themselves at the pole of the battery, around
which the gelatinous silex collected, cannot be doubted. It is true,
however, that, when the solution was exposed to the atmosphere, the
insects appeared much sooner and more numerous than when care was taken to
exclude every thing but oxygen enough to sustain life. This fact leads to
the suspicion that the ova of the insect might have been communicated
through the air, and that, even when an attempt was made to exclude the
atmosphere, some ova were still present. This conclusion is rendered still
more probable by some experiments made by Professor Schulz, of Berlin, on
the production of infusoria. Having first boiled the vegetable and animal
infusions, so as to destroy all germs of organic life, and expelled all
the atmosphere, he attached an apparatus in such a manner that, whatever
air entered afterwards, must pass through sulphuric acid, or a solution of
potash. The result was, that no infusoria or vegetable forms appeared
during two months; but in the same infusion, placed in the open air, and
exposed to the same light and heat as that enclosed in the glass vessel,
numerous animalcula and fungi appeared in a day or two. It will need,
therefore, very long and patient experiments to establish the assertion
that galvanism alone can produce living animals without the presence of
germs.
Not many years since, the equivocal or casual production of animalcula,
without any other parentage than law, was thought to be made out by a
multitude of facts. For these minute creatures appeared almost every
where, and in places where it seemed impossible that their ova should be
found. But the researches of Ehrenberg have cleared up the difficulties of
their origination in the ordinary modes of reproduction, in nearly every
instance, and the advocates of the law hypothesis have been fairly driven
from this stronghold of their argument. In describing the various modes of
reproduction with which nature has provided the infusoria, Professor Owen
says, "Thus each leaves, by the last act of its life, the means of
perpetuating and diffusing its species by thousands of fertile germs. When
once the thickly tenanted pool is dried up, and its bottom converted into
a layer of dust, these inconceivably minute and light ova will be raised
with the dust by the first puff of wind, diffused through the atmosphere,
and may there remain long suspended; forming, perhaps, their share of the
particles which we see flickering in the sunbeam, ready to fall into any
collection of water, beaten down by every summer shower into the streams
or pools which receive or may be formed by such showers, and, by virtue of
their tenacity of life, ready to develop themselves whenever they may find
the requisite conditions of their existence. The possibility, or, rather,
the high probability, that such is the design of the oviparous generation
of the infusoria, and such the common mode of the diffusion of their ova,
renders the hypothesis of equivocal generation, which has been so
frequently invoked to explain their origin in new-formed natural or
artificial infusions, quite gratuitous."--_Lectures on Comp. Anat._ vol.
ii. p. 31.
No longer able to maintain a foothold among the animalcula, the defenders
of this hypothesis have of late attempted to take a stand among animals of
a somewhat higher grade, viz., the entozoa, or animals inhabiting other
animals. These being considerably larger than the infusoria, their ova
could not float in the atmosphere; but they possess a wonderful tenacity
of life; some of them exhibiting signs of life after having been in
boiling water for an hour; others have revived after having been packed
for a long time in ice, and frozen; others have revived after lying in a
dried state for six or seven years. Their power of reproduction, in the
ordinary modes, is also prodigious, exceeding even that of the infusoria.
It will, then, demand very strong evidence to prove that such animals
possess also the power of spontaneous production, without parentage, or
that their existence within other animals cannot be explained without such
a supposition. For, if capable of being produced without parentage, why
should such extraordinary care have been taken for their multiplication,
in almost all the ordinary modes in which animals are reproduced?
The extraordinary facts that have been discovered by Professors
Steenstrup, Owen, and others, within a few years, respecting what they
call _alternate generation_, or _parthenogenesis_, have been thought
favorable to the hypothesis of development. Among the mollusca, the
polyparia, the entozoa, and infusoria, it is found that, in some species,
the result of sexual union is the production of a larva without sex, and,
therefore, incapable of propagating in the usual way. Yet that larva can
of itself produce another larva quite different from itself, and this
larva another, and so on, sometimes for eight or ten generations, when the
spermatic force seems to be exhausted, and a progeny exactly like the
original parents that started the series is produced, capable of giving
rise to another and a similar series. Here, then, we find a succession of
progeny for several generations, and all quite unlike one another, yet
without any immediate parental agency. Why is it not an example of
spontaneous generation? and why may not new species be produced in this
manner?
There are two facts prominent on this subject which afford a full answer
to such questions. One is, that these generations of larvae always begin
with the spermatozoon and the ovum of parents; the other is, that the
series always closes, if allowed to run its natural course, in individuals
with sex, exactly identical with those that started it; so that the
species always remains entire. The whole process is simply one of the
infinitely varied modes which nature employs to preserve and perfect the
species. The process never stops with any of the larvae intervening between
the fertile parents at the beginning, and the fertile individuals at the
end of the series. Professor Owen supposes--certainly with much
plausibility--that some of the original germ-cells, not wanted for the
production of the first larva, pass on to form the successive generations,
till the series is complete; so that, after all, the case is not an
exception to the general law of reproduction by parental agency; and
instead of sustaining, it certainly goes against, the notion of
spontaneous generation and of transmutation of species; because it shows
how far parental influence may reach, and how tenacious nature is of
specific distinctions. For the same reasons, the case affords a
presumption against other alleged cases of equivocal generation and
metamorphoses of species.[18]
Appeal has also been made to the vegetable kingdom for examples of the
production of organic beings, viz., plants without seeds. Who has not
observed, for instance, how the clearing up and burning over of a piece of
land will often cause an entirely new tribe of plants to spring up and
flourish? Whence came the seeds? We have seen, for instance, (in Richmond,
Virginia,) a thick growth of pines upon a spot where from six to ten feet
of soil had been removed a few years previously.
It is very possible, in some cases of this kind, that the soil, having
been produced by aqueous agencies, may contain seeds to a considerable
depth, and that their vitality may have been preserved for centuries; for
we know that seeds three thousand years old, taken from Egyptian
catacombs, have germinated, in favorable circumstances. In most cases of
this sort, however, the winds have probably supplied the seed, it may be,
long before. We were one day wandering over Mount Holyoke, where a spot
recently cleared was covered with the fire-weed, a species of senecio; and
as we were musing upon its origin, a strong blast of wind swept over the
plants, just ready to throw off their seeds. Sustained by their light
egrets, they floated away on the air in numbers sufficient to cover half
the mountain with the plant, when it should be cleared and burnt over. Yet
their existence would never be suspected till those circumstances should
be developed. At least, until we can prove that the soil contains no
seeds by the most careful examination, it will be premature to infer the
equivocal production of the plants growing upon it.
Vegetable physiology furnishes another fact, which seems to me to look
still more favorable to this law hypothesis than the preceding, although
it has not been noticed, so far as I know, by the advocates of that
hypothesis. Speaking of the matter of which certain flowerless plants are
composed, Dr. Lindlay says, "It is even uncertain whether this matter will
produce its like, and whether it is not a mere representation of the vital
principle of vegetation, capable of being called into action, either as a
fungus, or algae, or lichen, according to the particular conditions of
heat, light, and moisture, and the medium in which it is placed; producing
fungi upon dead or putrid organic beings, lichens upon living vegetables,
earth, or stones, and algae where water is the medium in which it is
developed." Again, in speaking of that green slime which often covers the
soil, rocks, walls, and glass in damp places, he says, "The slime
resembles a layer of albumen, spread with a brush; it exfoliates in
drying, and finally becomes visible by the manner in which it colors green
or deep brown. One might call it a provisional creation, waiting to be
organized, and then assuming different forms according to the nature of
the corpuscles which penetrate it, or develop among it. It may further be
said to be the origin of two very distinct existences, the one certainly
animal, the other purely vegetable."--_Natural System_, pp. 326, 328, 334.
Now, admitting all the facts that have been detailed respecting the
production of infusoria, entozoa, acari, and cryptogamian plants to be
true, although most of them are far from being proved, it seems to me that
they do not show us how vitality is produced by mere law, without the
special agency of the Deity. Writers on the subject seem to overlook the
distinction between organization and life. The first may be present in its
highest perfection without the latter, as it is in animals and plants
recently killed. The organization is merely a preparation to receive the
mysterious principles which we call _life_ and _intellect_. Light, heat,
and electricity may be the essential agents in producing the organization,
but they do not explain the nature, or account for the presence, of life.
That must, so far as we know, come from some other and a higher source.
Galvanism may bring gelatinous matter into the form of an insect, or
infusoria, or entozoa; but there is no evidence that it can impart life,
however exquisite the organization. It may be, and we have reason to
suppose it is, the divine will to bestow life whenever a certain
organization exists; but this does not show that his special agency is not
concerned in it. He may will that the peculiar life of a lichen shall be
given to the same elementary matter which, in another situation, he
constitutes an alga, or a fungus, or even an animal. But this would not
prove that natural law alone could produce life. There is nowhere any
evidence that sensibility, contractility, and especially intellect and
volition, are the result of any natural operations. In their properties
they are so entirely diverse from all known physical effects, that we must
impute them to some other than a natural cause. We must call in the power
of a supreme intelligent Being. The laws of affinity, light, heat, and
electricity, of endosmose and exosmose, may prepare the organization, but
their power ends there; and hence true philosophy requires us to impute
the phenomena of life and intellect to an extraneous and infinitely higher
cause.
The case, then, stands thus: In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, we
are certain that organization requires the previous existence and agency
of a being similarly organized, which we call the parent. But suppose
that, in a very few cases, the laws of nature can produce the
organization. It still demands another and a higher power--not a blind
impulse, but an intelligent cause--to bestow life and intellect. To prove
the existence of a natural cause for the arrangement of the atoms into an
organic structure, does by no means prove the same for those higher and
mysterious principles that make that structure a living, thinking being.
Such, however, are the strongest arguments by which the advocates of the
law hypothesis sustain their views of the origin of organism, life, and
intellect. The next step in their reasoning is to show how animals and
plants may be transmuted from one species, or genus, or family, to
another; so that the existing vast variety can be traced to a few original
germs. They maintain that these developments of the more from the less
perfect have proceeded along certain parallel lines; one series of
developments, for instance, taking the line of the fishes, another of the
reptiles, another of the birds, another of quadrupeds, and so on.
To prove these developments or transmutations, they appeal first to the
physiological history of the mammalian embryo. In its earliest stages, it
can hardly be distinguished, except in size, from the unborn polygastric
infusoria. The brain of a human embryo appears at first like that of an
invertebrate animal; next like that of a fish; then successively like that
of a reptile, a bird, a rodent mammal, a ruminant, and a monkey. So the
heart, at an early stage, looks like that of an insect; then it has two
chambers, like that of a fish; then it becomes three chambered, like that
of a reptile; and finally, four chambered, as in the mammalia. The
inference which these theorists would draw from such facts is, that man
actually begins his existence as an animalcule, and passes successively
through the mould or condition of other animals, before he reaches the
highest. And the reasons why he does become a man, rather than an
echinoderm, or a fish, or a monkey, is only some slightly modifying
circumstance, as, for instance, a longer gestation. It appears to me,
however, that the inferences sound philosophy should derive from such
facts are, first, that, while there is a seeming resemblance between the
human embryo and that of lower animals, there is, in fact, a real and a
wide diversity; so that the one infallibly becomes an inferior animal, and
the other a man. Could a single example be produced in which a human
embryo stopped at and became an insect, or a fish, or a monkey, there
might be some plausibility in the supposition. But it is as certain to
become a man as the sun is to rise and set; and, therefore, the human
condition results from laws as fixed as those that regulate the movements
of the heavenly bodies. That is a very superficial philosophy which infers
identity of nature from mere external resemblance.