When we are bold enough to ask the question, Is life an addition to
matter or an evolution from matter? how all these extra-scientific
theories about life as a separate entity wilt and fade away! If we know
anything about the ways of creative energy, we know that they are not as
our ways; we know its processes bear no analogy to the linear and
external doings of man. Creative energy works from within; it identifies
itself with, and is inseparable from, the element in which it works. I
know that in this very statement I am idealizing the creative energy,
but my reader will, I trust, excuse this inevitable anthropomorphism.
The way of the creative energy is the way of evolution. When we begin to
introduce things, when we begin to separate the two orders, the vital
and the material, or, as Bergson says, when we begin to think of things
created, and of a thing that creates, we are not far from the state of
mind of our childhood, and of the childhood of the race. We are not far
from the Mosaic account of creation. Life appears as an introduction,
man and his soul as introductions.
Our reason, our knowledge of the method of Nature, declare for
evolution; because here we are, here is this amazing world of life about
us, and here it goes on through the action and interaction of purely
physical and chemical forces. Life seems as natural as day and night,
as the dews and the rain. Our studies of the past history of the globe
reveal the fact that life appeared upon a cooling planet when the
temperature was suitable, and when its basic elements, water and carbon
dioxide, were at hand. How it began, whether through insensible changes
in the activities of inert matter, lasting whole geologic ages, or by a
sudden transformation at many points on the earth's surface, we can
never know. But science can see no reason for believing that its
beginning was other than natural; it was inevitable from the
constitution of matter itself. Moreover, since the law of evolution
seems of universal application, and affords the key to more great
problems than any other generalization of the human mind, one would say
on _a priori_ grounds that life is an evolution, that its genesis is to
be sought in the inherent capacities and potentialities of matter
itself. How else could it come? Science cannot go outside of matter and
its laws for an explanation of any phenomena that appear in matter. It
goes inside of matter instead, and in its mysterious molecular
attractions and repulsions, in the whirl and dance of the atoms and
electrons, in their emanations and transformations, in their amazing
potencies and activities, sees, or seems to see, the secret of the
origin of life itself. But this view is distasteful to a large number of
thinking persons. Many would call it frank materialism, and declare
that it is utterly inadequate to supply the spiritual and ideal
background which is the strength and solace of our human life.