“The question as to whether out of dead substance a living cell can be
produced, whether so-called spontaneous generation is a possibility,
does not in the present condition of our knowledge permit of being
answered in a decided negative. We are bound to admit the possibility,
even though all experiments yield a negative result.”[33]
The necessity which, despite all negative results, compels one to
cling to the possibility of spontaneous generation, is the truly heroic
violence with which biology identifies “life” and “cell.”
The entire sum of biological wisdom comes to a point in the saying,
_Omnis cellula e cellula_--against which as little objection is to be
urged as against the statement of the fact that every living being
arises from another living being.
At this point, however, geology steps in and plays the spoil-sport
by producing indubitable proofs of the one-time molten condition of
our globe, thereby setting an insurmountable limit to “life” in the
biological acceptation of the word.
This fact served as spur to all sorts of attempts at imparting a more
scientific character to the belief in spontaneous generation.
In these endeavours the main support received came from organic
chemistry.
The first achievement on the road to the chemical “synthesis” of life
was Wöhler’s demonstration of artificial urea. But this event has been
so far outstripped that to-day one only looks back at it in order to
bring visibly before the eye the progress that has been made in a
comparatively short space of time. To-day one is already beginning to
talk of the possibility of producing living albumen.
The following passage from Huxley’s _On our knowledge of the causes
of the phenomena of organic nature_ may serve as a sample of the
“scientific circumspection” with which one sets to work upon this most
difficult of tasks also.
After laying it down that there are two possible proofs of the origin
of life: first, the historical one as found in geology; and second,
that derived from experiment--of which the former is unsatisfactory and
the latter not carried out, the writer proceeds:--
“To enable us to say that we know anything about the experimental
origination of organization and life, the investigator ought to be able
to take inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, ammonia, water, and
salines, in any sort of inorganic combination, and be able to build
them up into protein matter, and then that protein matter ought to
begin to live in an organic form. That nobody has done as yet, and I
suspect it will be a long while before anybody does do it. But the
thing is by no means so impossible as it looks; for the researches of
modern chemistry have shown us--I won’t say the road towards it, but,
if I may so say, they have shown the finger-post pointing to the road
that may lead to it.”
_O agnus dei!_ lend me but a little of thy lamb’s patience, that so
I may be able to smile at this tangle of profound absurdities, this
_docta ignorantia_. And this they call weighing a difficult problem
with “scientific circumspection”! It is not difficult, God wot, to be
circumspect when it is the purely imaginary that is in question. For
the famous Monsieur “Life” of whose organization and structure mention
is made above has precisely as much actuality as that Mr. Table d’Hôte
for whom the farmer from the country inquired. Such a being is the
most effective of subjects for science, for it admits of being solved
without remainder in learnedness. _Quousque tandem professores!_
No physicist would be so irrational as to say, “I see the wind--in the
swaying bough of a tree and so forth; I hear, smell, feel, measure it;
but where now is he--this Mr. Wind himself?” The biologist, however,
manages to say, “I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think life; but
where now is that unknown god ‘Life’ himself?” Once for all, Man, know
that thy seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking--even
were they biological tricks such as thine--are life itself; other life
there is not. To seek to have it issue like some homunculus from the
retort or the incubator--this oughtest thou rather to leave to the
other poets--the genuine ones!
It is far from my intention to embark upon polemics; but it is
well-nigh impossible to pass anywhere near folly when it masquerades in
the black of the most profound seriousness and resist the temptation to
give it a good push, so that the public, by the fluttering of the rags,
may recognize the hollow scarecrow. But after all, there is some sense
in everything, even if this “sense” is oftentimes “non-sense!”
This is one of the attempts made to bring life--as “cell”--and the
facts of geology into harmony. The other runs as follows:--
Force and matter are imperishable: it is only the form that changes.
The world of astronomy displays this beginninglessness in the form of
the ceaseless mutation of the heavenly bodies. Accordingly, organic
life also must be beginningless, not as a sort of mystic primeval slime
but as a something formed, as a cell or group of cells. Consequently it
is only a question of explaining how life could find its way over from
a worn-out world into a youthful one just solidifying from the molten
state.
This theory presents a good example of how similarity of sound may
conceal complete difference in sense.
Like the Buddha, this theory, too, teaches the beginninglessness of
organized life. But whilst with the Buddha there is an actual new
arising as flames arise new, by an energy encountering the material,
“striking in,” here there is only an inept pushing back of the facts
perceptible to sense; in which latter procedure meteorites are made
to serve as a sort of cosmic jam-jar, the precious stuff “life,” in a
conserved condition, so to speak, being passed over therein from one
world to another.
A variation of this problem is the question as to whether “life”
has arisen on the earth in one single place, or in several places
simultaneously.
In the Buddha-thought all such questions are reduced to impotence.