SPENCER AS BIOLOGIST--THE DATA OF BIOLOGY
_The Principles of Biology--Organic Matter--Metabolism--Definition
of Life--The Dynamic Element in Life--Life and Mechanism_
_The Principles of Biology._--If there is any book that will save a
naturalist from being easy-going it is Spencer's _Principles of
Biology_. It is a biological classic, which, in its range and intensity,
finds no parallel except in Haeckel's greatest and least known work, the
_Generelle Morphologie_, which was published in 1866 about the same time
as the _Principles_. As one of our foremost biologists, Prof. Lloyd
Morgan has said[5]: "What strikes one most forcibly is the extraordinary
range and grasp of its author, the piercing keenness of his eye for
essentials, his fertility in invention, and the bold sweep of his
logical method. In these days of increasingly straitened specialism, it
is well that we should feel the influence of a thinker whose powers of
generalisation have seldom been equalled and perhaps never surpassed."
Much that is in _The Principles of Biology_ has now become common
biological property; much has been absorbed or independently reached by
others; consciously or unconsciously we are now, as it were, standing
on Spencer's shoulders, but this should not blind us to the magnitude of
Spencer's achievement. The book was more than a careful balance-sheet of
the facts of life at a time when that was much needed; it meant
orientation and systematisation; it was the introduction of order,
clearness, and breadth of view. It gave biology a fresh start by
displaying the facts of life and the inductions from these for the first
time clearly in the light of evolution. For if the evolution idea is an
adequate modal formula of the great process of Becoming, then we need to
think of growth, development, differentiation, integration,
reproduction, heredity, death--all the big facts--in the light of this.
And this is what the _Principles of Biology_ helps us to do. It is of
course saturated with the theory of the transmissibility of acquired
characters--an idea integral to much of Spencer's thinking--which had
hardly begun to be questioned when the work was published, which is now,
however, a very moot point indeed. For this and other reasons, we doubt
whether Spencer was wise in making a re-edition of what might well have
remained as a historical document, especially as the re-edition is not
so satisfactory for 1898 as the original was for 1864.
The chief purpose of _The Principles of Biology_ was to interpret the
general facts of organic life as results of evolution. Manifestly, as a
preliminary step, "it was needful to specify and illustrate these
general facts; and needful also to set forth those physical and chemical
properties of organic matter which are implied in the interpretation."
"What are the antecedent truths taken for granted in Biology, and what
are the biological truths, which, apart from theory, may be regarded as
established by observation?" Thus Part I. deals with organic matter and
its activity or metabolism, the action and reaction between organisms
and their environment, the correspondence between organisms and their
circumstances, and similar general data. Part II. states the big
inductions regarding growth, development, adaptation, heredity,
variation, and so on. Part III. deals with the arguments suggestive of
organic evolution and with the factors in the process. Part IV. is a
detailed interpretation of the evolution of organic structure, and Part
V. an analogous interpretation of the evolution of functions. Part VI.
deals with the laws of multiplication.
Before illustrating Spencer's workmanship in dealing with these great
themes, we cannot but ask what preparation he had for a task so
ambitious. He had an inborn interest in Natural History; he had dabbled
in Entomology and done a little microscopic work; he had attended
lectures by Owen and had enjoyed many a talk with Huxley; he had been
influenced by Lamarck, Milne-Edwards, and von Baer; he had read hither
and thither in medical and biological literature; but it is manifest
that his own admission was true that he was "inadequately equipped for
the task." That he succeeded in producing a biological classic is a
signal proof of his intellectual strength. He was kept right by his
power of laying hold of cardinal facts and by his grip of the
Evolution-clue. Not to be forgotten, moreover, was the generous help
rendered by Professor Huxley and Sir Joseph Hooker, who checked his
proofs. Spencer made but one biological investigation (1865-6), and
that of little moment--on the circulation in plants--but his contact
with the facts of organic life was by no means superficial. His
intelligence was such that he got further into them than most concrete
workers have ever done. And in some measure it was an advantage to him
in his task that he was no specialist, that he did not know too much. It
enabled him to approach the facts with a fresh mind, and to see more
clearly the general facts of Biology which lie behind the details of
Botany and Natural History. He was in no danger of not seeing the wood
for the trees.
_Organic Matter._--"In the substances of which organisms are composed,
the conditions necessary to that redistribution of Matter and Motion
which constitutes Evolution, are fulfilled in a far higher degree than
at first appears." Thus the most complex compounds into which Carbon,
Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen enter, together with small proportions of
two other elements (Sulphur and Phosphorus) which very readily oxidise,
"have an instability so great that decomposition ensues under ordinary
atmospheric conditions"; the component elements have an unusual tendency
to unite in different modes of aggregation though in the same
proportions, thus forming analogous substances with different
properties; the colloid character of the most complex compounds that are
instrumental to vital actions gives them great molecular mobility--a
plastic quality fitting them for organisation; "while the relatively
great inertia of the large and complex organic molecules renders them
comparatively incapable of being set in motion by the ethereal
undulations, and so reduced to less coherent forms of aggregation, this
same inertia facilitates changes of arrangement among their constituent
molecules or atoms, since, in proportion as an incident force impresses
but little motion on a mass, it is the better able to impress motion on
the parts of the mass in relation to one another"; "lastly, the great
difference in diffusibility between colloids and crystalloids makes
possible in the tissues of organisms a specially rapid redistribution of
matter and motion; both because colloids, being easily permeable by
crystalloids, can be chemically acted on throughout their whole masses,
instead of only on their surfaces; and because the products of
decomposition, being also crystalloids, can escape as fast as they are
produced, leaving room for further transformations." In short, organic
matter is chemically and physically well-suited to be the physical basis
of life.
The colloid character of organic matter facilitates modification by
arrested momentum or by continuous strain. There is often strong
capillary affinity and rapid osmosis. Heat is an important agent of
redistribution in the animal organism, and light is an
all-important agent of molecular changes in organic substances. But
the extreme modifiability of organic matter by chemical agencies is
the chief cause of that active molecular rearrangement which
organisms, and especially animal organisms, display. In short, the
substances of which organisms are built up are specially sensitive
to the varied environing influences; "in consequence of its extreme
instability organic matter undergoes extensive molecular
rearrangements on very slight changes of conditions."
The correlative general fact is that during these extensive
molecular rearrangements, there are evolved large amounts of
energy, in the form of motion, heat, and even light and
electricity. On the one hand the components of organic matter are
regarded as falling from positions of unstable equilibrium to
positions of stable equilibrium; on the other hand, "they give out
in their falls certain momenta--momenta that may be manifested as
heat, light, electricity, nerve-force, or mechanical motion,
according as the conditions determine." It follows from the law of
the Conservation of Energy that "whatever amount of power an
organism expends in any shape, is the correlate and equivalent of a
power which was taken into it from without."
_Metabolism._--"The materials forming the tissues of plants as well as
the materials contained in them, are progressively elaborated from the
inorganic substances; and the resulting compounds, eaten, and some of
them assimilated by animals, pass through successive changes which are,
on the average, of an opposite character: the two sets being
constructive and destructive. To express changes of both these natures
the term 'metabolism' is used; and such of the metabolic changes as
result in building up from simple to compound are distinguished as
'anabolic,' while those which result in the falling down from compound
to simple are distinguished as 'katabolic.'"
"Regarded as a whole, metabolism includes, in the first place,
those anabolic or building-up processes specially characterising
plants, during which the impacts of ethereal undulations are stored
up in compound molecules of unstable kinds; and it includes, in the
second place, those katabolic or tumbling-down changes specially
characterising animals, during which this accumulated molecular
motion (contained in the food directly or indirectly supplied by
plants) is in large measure changed into those molar motions
constituting animal activities. There are multitudinous metabolic
changes of minor kinds which are ancillary to these--many katabolic
changes in plants and many anabolic changes in animals--but these
are the essential ones."
_Definition of Life._--Spencer's first definition of life (_Theory of
Population_, 1852) was simply "the co-ordination of actions." But he
soon saw that this was too wide. "It may be said of the Solar System,
with its regularly-recurring movements and its self-balancing
perturbations, that it, also, exhibits co-ordination of actions." "A
true idea of Life must be an idea of some kind of change or changes."
Therefore he carefully considered assimilation on the one hand, as an
example of bodily life, and reasoning on the other hand, as an example
of that life known as intelligence, and inquired into the common
features of these two processes of change. Thus there emerged the
formula that life is _the definite combination of heterogeneous changes,
both simultaneous and successive_. But this formula also fails, as he
said, by omitting the most distinctive peculiarity. It is universally
recognised that living creatures continually exhibit _effective_
response to external stimuli. To be able to do this is the very essence
of life, distinguishing its responses from non-vital responses. Thus a
clause must be added to the proximate conception, and the formula reads:
"Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both
simultaneous and successive, _in correspondence with external
co-existences and sequences_." There are internal relations, namely,
"definite combinations of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and
successive," and there are external relations, "external co-existences
and sequences," and life is the connexion of correspondence between
them. Thus under its most abstract form, Spencer's conception of Life
is:--"_The continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations._"
In an appendix to the revised edition of the _Principles of Biology_,
Spencer admits that he had not sufficiently emphasised the fact of
_co-ordination_. "The idea of co-ordination is so cardinal a one that it
should be expressed not by implication but overtly." The formula
defining the phenomenon of life thus reads: "_The definite combination
of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, co-ordinated
into correspondence with external co-existences and sequences._" It may
be needful to remark that this was not intended to define Life in its
essence, but Life as manifested to us. "The ultimate mystery is as great
as ever: seeing that there remains unsolved the question: What
_determines_ the co-ordination of actions?"
If life be correspondence between internal and external relations, then
"allowing a margin for perturbations, the life will continue only while
the correspondence continues; the completeness of the life will be
proportionate to the completeness of the correspondence; and the life
will be perfect only when the correspondence is perfect." As organisms
become more differentiated they enter into more complex relations with
their environment, and as the environment becomes more complex organisms
become more differentiated. The internal and external relations increase
in number and intricacy _pari passu_, and the correspondences between
them become more complex, numerous, and persistent. "The highest life is
that which, like our own, shows great complexity in the correspondences,
great rapidity in the succession of them, and great length in the series
of them." "The highest Life is reached when there is some inner relation
of actions fitted to meet every outer relation of actions by which the
organism can be affected." "This continuous correspondence between
inner and outer relations which constitutes Life, and the perfection of
which is the perfection of Life, answers completely to that state of
organic moving equilibrium which arises in the course of Evolution and
tends ever to become more complete."
_The Dynamic Element in Life._--But Spencer was not satisfied with his
formula of Life. He recognised that there were vital phenomena which
were not covered by it. The growth of a gall on a plant, due to irritant
substances produced by an insect, shows no internal relations adjusted
to external relations; the heart of a frog will live and beat for a long
time after excision; the segmentation of an egg shows no correspondence
with co-existences and sequences in its environment; when rudimentary
organs are partly formed and then absorbed, no adjustment can be alleged
between the inner relations which these present and any outer relations:
the outer relations they refer to ceased millions of years ago; no
correspondence, or part of a correspondence, by which inner actions are
made to balance outer actions, can be seen in the dairymaid's laugh or
the workman's whistle; the struggles of a boy in an epileptic fit show
no correspondence with the co-existences and sequences around him, but
they betray vitality as much as do the changing movements of a hawk
pursuing a pigeon; "both exhibit that principle of activity which
constitutes the essential element in our conception of life."
"When it is said that Life is the definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in
correspondence with external co-existences and sequences, there
arises the question--Changes of what?... Still more clearly do we
see this insufficiency when we take the more abstract
definition--"the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations." Relations between what things? is the question
to be asked. A relation of which the terms are unspecified does not
connote a thought but merely the blank form of a thought. Its value
is comparable to that of a cheque on which no amount is written."
This self-criticism led Spencer to the conclusion that "that which gives
substance to our idea of Life is a certain unspecified principle of
activity. The dynamic element in life is its essential element."
But how are we to conceive of this dynamic element? "Is this principle
of activity inherent in organic matter, or is it something superadded?"
Spencer at once rejected the second alternative, because the hypothesis
of an independent vital principle has a bad pedigree, carrying us back
to the ghost-theory of the savage, and because it is an unrepresentable
'pseud-idea,' which cannot even be imagined.
But the alternative of regarding Life as inherent in the substances of
the organisms displaying it is also full of difficulties. "The processes
which go on in living things are incomprehensible as results of any
physical actions known to us." "We are obliged to confess that Life in
its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. The required
principle of activity, which we found cannot be represented as an
independent vital principle, we now find cannot be represented as a
principle inherent in living matter. If, by assuming its inherence, we
think the facts are accounted for, we do but cheat ourselves with
pseud-ideas."
"What then are we to say--what are we to think? Simply that in this
direction, as in all other directions, our explanations finally bring us
face to face with the inexplicable. The Ultimate Reality behind this
manifestation, as behind all other manifestations, transcends
conception."
"Life as a principle of activity is unknown and unknowable--while its
phenomena are accessible in thought the implied noumenon is
inaccessible--only the manifestations come within the range of our
intelligence, while that which is manifested lies beyond it."
But "our surface knowledge continues to be a knowledge valid of its
kind, after recognising the truth that it is only surface knowledge."
The chapter on "The Dynamic Element in Life," which concludes the
section of the book called _The Data of Biology_, was interpolated in
the revised edition (1898). It indicates, as it seems to us, that
Spencer's point of view had changed considerably since he stereotyped
his _First Principles_. We must pause to consider what this change was.
In his _First Principles_ Spencer wrote: "The task before us is that of
exhibiting the phenomena of Evolution in synthetic order. Setting out
from an established ultimate principle [the Persistence of Force] it has
to be shown that the course of transformation among all kinds of
existences cannot but be that which we have seen it to be." [This refers
to the formula: Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant
dissipation of motion during which the matter passes from an indefinite,
incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during
which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.] "It has
to be shown that the redistribution of matter and motion must everywhere
take place in those ways and produce those traits, which celestial
bodies, organisms, societies alike display. And it has to be shown that
this universality of process results from the same necessity which
determines each simplest movement around us, down to the accelerated
fall of a stone or the recurrent beat of a harp string. In other words,
the phenomena of Evolution have to be deduced from the Persistence of
Force. As before said, 'to this an ultimate analysis brings us down; and
on this a rational synthesis must build up.'" And again he wrote: "The
interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force,
is nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought to
the simplest symbols."
These were brave words, and if we understand them aright it is, to say
the least, surprising to be told when we come to the life of organisms
that "the processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as
results of any physical actions known to us."
On the first page of the _Principles of Biology_ we read: "The
properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by combination, are
not destroyed in reality. It follows from the persistence of force, that
the properties of a compound are _resultants_ of the properties of its
components--_resultants_ in which the properties of the components are
severally in full action, though mutually obscured." But on p. 122 it is
written: "We find it impossible to conceive Life as emerging from the
co-operation of the components."
In the frankest possible way Spencer admitted that his definition of
Life did not cover the facts, that it did not recognise the essential or
dynamic element, that "Life in its essence cannot be conceived in
physico-chemical terms." But if so, it can only be by great faith or
great credulity that we can believe that an Evolution-formula in terms
of "Matter, Motion, and Force" is adequate to describe its genesis.
At an earlier part of the _Data of Biology_ Spencer assumed the origin
of active protoplasm from a combination of inert proteids during the
time of the earth's slow cooling, and did not suggest that there was any
particular difficulty in the assumption; yet in the end we are told that
it is "impossible even to imagine those processes going on in organic
matter out of which emerges the dynamic element in Life."
"One can picture," Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan writes,[6] "how certain
folk will gloat and 'chortle in their joy' over this confession,
for such it will almost inevitably be regarded. But it is not
likely that Mr Spencer is here, in so vital a matter, false to the
evolution he has done so much to elucidate. The two seemingly
contradictory statements are not really contradictory; they are
made in different connections; the one in reference to phenomenal
causation, the other to noumenal causation--to an underlying
'principle of activity.' The simple statement of fact is that the
phenomena of life are data _sui generis_, and must as such be
accepted by science. Just as when oxygen and hydrogen combine to
form water, new data for science emerge; so, when protoplasm was
evolved, new data emerged which it is the business of science to
study. In both cases we believe that the results are due to the
operation of natural laws, that is to say, can, with adequate
knowledge, be described in terms of antecedence and sequence. But
in both cases the results, which we endeavour thus to formulate,
are the outcome of principles of activity, the mode of operation of
which is inexplicable. We formulate the laws of evolution in terms
of antecedence and sequence; we also refer these laws to an
underlying cause, the noumenal mode of action of which is
inexplicable. This, if I interpret him rightly, is Mr Spencer's
meaning."
Our own impression is that Spencer was guilty of "wobbling" between two
modes of interpretation, between scientific description and
philosophical explanation, a confusion incident on the fact that his
_Principles of Biology_ was also part of his _Synthetic Philosophy_.
Biology as such has of course nothing to do with "the Ultimate Reality
behind manifestations" or with the "implied noumenon." And when Spencer
says "it is impossible even to imagine those processes going on in
organic matter out of which emerges the dynamic element in Life," or
when he illustrates his difficulty by pointing out how impossible it is
to give a physico-chemical interpretation of the way a plant cell makes
its wall, or a coccolith its imbricated covering, or a sponge its
spicules, or a hen eats broken egg-shells, we do not believe he was
thinking of anything but "phenomenal causation." When he says "The
processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as results
of any physical actions known to us," we see no reason to take the edge
off this truth by saying that Spencer simply meant that the Ultimate
Reality is inaccessible.
In any case, whether Spencer meant that we cannot give any scientific
analysis in physico-chemical terms of the unified behaviour of even the
simplest organism, or whether he simply meant that the _raison d'etre_,
the ultimate reality of life, was an inaccessible noumenon, he
confesses that we have "only a surface knowledge"; "only the
manifestations come within the range of our intelligence while that
which is manifested lies beyond it"; "the order existing among the
actions which living things exhibit remains the same whether we know or
do not know the nature of that from which the actions originate." This
seems to us to sound a more modest note than is heard in the sentence:
"The interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion and
Force, is nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of
thought to the simplest symbols."
_Life and Mechanism._--But are not all biologists confronted with the
difficulty that gave Herbert Spencer pause? Physiological analysis has
done much in revealing chains of sequence within the organism, but no
vital phenomenon has as yet been redescribed in terms of chemistry and
physics. Again and again some success in discovering physico-chemical
chains of sequence has awakened the expectation that the dawn of a
mechanical theory of life was drawing nigh, but the dawn seems further
off than ever. The residual phenomena left uninterpreted by mechanical
categories loom out more persistently than they did a century ago. As
Bunge once said "the more thoroughly and conscientiously we endeavour to
study biological problems, the more are we convinced that even those
processes which we have already regarded as explicable by chemical and
physical laws, are in reality infinitely more complex, and at present
defy any attempt at a mechanical explanation." As Dr J. S. Haldane puts
it: "If we look at the phenomena which are capable of being stated, or
explained in physico-chemical terms, we see at once that there is
nothing in them characteristic of life.... The action of each bodily
mechanism, the composition and structure of each organ, are all mutually
determined and connected with one another in such a way as at once to
distinguish a living organism from anything else. As this mutual
determination is the characteristic mark of what is living, it cannot be
ignored in the framing of fundamental working hypotheses."
The fact is that we have to regard the living organism as a new
synthesis which we cannot at present analyse, and life as an activity
which cannot at present be redescribed in terms of the present physical
conceptions of matter and energy. And even if a living organism were
artificially made, the problem would not be altered; though our
conception of what we at present call inanimate might be.
Prof. Karl Pearson states the position from another point of view.
For the biologist as a scientific inquirer "the problem of whether life
is or is not a mechanism is not a question of whether the same things,
'matter' and 'force,' are or are not at the back of organic and
inorganic phenomena--of what is at the back of either class of
sense-impressions we know absolutely nothing--but of whether the
conceptual shorthand of the physicist, his ideal world of ether, atom,
and molecule, will or will not also suffice to describe the biologist's
perceptions." That it does not at present seems the conviction of the
majority of physiologists; if it ever should it would be "purely an
economy of thought; it would provide the great advantages which flow
from the use of one instead of two conceptual shorthands, but it would
not 'explain' life any more than the law of gravitation explains the
elliptic path of a planet."
"Atom" and "molecule" and the rest are scientific concepts, not
phenomenal existences, therefore even if the physicist's formulae should
fit vital phenomena--which they seem very far from doing--there would be
no explanation forthcoming, for "mechanism does not explain anything."
Thus, like Spencer, we find the secret of the organism irresoluble in
terms of lower categories. But we differ from him inasmuch as we believe
that this admission is fatal to his formula of evolution, to his
definition of life, and to the coherence of his _Synthetic Philosophy_.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Mr Herbert Spencer's Biology, "Natural Science," xiii. (1898) pp.
377-383.
[6] "Natural Science," xiii., December 1898, p. 380.