Life: Its True Genesis by R. W. Wright

R >> R. W. Wright >> Life: Its True Genesis

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.

When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
no daring mortal could ever pass.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.

The bridge will never be built.

Chapter II.

Life--Its True Genesis.

The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
"correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.

In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[4] For like all living
principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its
primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows
onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no
postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered
correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one
grand comprehensive _Datum_ on which all the objective, as well as
subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved
upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the
"evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that
"upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of
Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving
raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream,
and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.

To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
"Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."

Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
the command "to bring forth" was issued:--

1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.

2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, _the
fowl of the air_.

3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.

4. _Let us make man in our own image_.

And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the _Cosmos_ to escape him,
would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.

But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
successfully entered upon by the AbbA(C) Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and
others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
established by inductive methods.

_Nihil ex nihilo_ is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as _omne
vivum ex vivo._ That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary least
considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without some
vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
two of a physiological or vital unit? [5] At all events, it is as
impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one unit as the other.
And so long as legitimate induction supports the doctrine of the Bible
Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary assumption which is wholly
without verification or proof.

But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
incredibility.

It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
--contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
"mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand _questio
vexata_ of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs of
all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (_i.e._
each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
hitherto occurring upon our globe.

Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
experiments of the renowned AbbA(C) Spallanzani--all the alleged "fantastic
assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism," by
whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "_molecules
organiques,_" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all the
_primordia viventium_ of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular machinery"
and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert Spencer and
Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of life ever
spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find that they
all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the Bible
Genesis, _and all are explained by them._ We say _all_, with one exception
only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and majestic this
exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came from no "muddy
vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him into existence. He
who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was to be created only
a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God created He him." And,
breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, _he became a living soul_!

Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because _you_ cannot
annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
compass of _your_ brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at _His_ sovereign and
commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the threshold
of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of spirit,
and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or "multiplieth words
without knowledge."

But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."

What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
power of God which operates (continuously operates) _to impart life to
inanimate nature._[6] From the connection in which it here stands it means
this, as in other connections it means the power which operates
(continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and good (God-like)
in man. There is no implication in the text that this life-giving
principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On the contrary,
there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just as operative
now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given by Professor
Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout inanimate
nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased its
operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of
mind.[7] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a part nature,
and a part not nature.

Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the _ZRA_.
the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
first received its _baptism of life_ from God--in other words, derived the
animating principle of life from the source of all Life.

And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the
vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused
to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a
definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the
animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most
remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic
idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor
any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both
vegetal and animal life.

St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturA| non quseritur
miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediA|val authority.
What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just
such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth,"
however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of
our modern scientists.

And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral _plexus_, and
Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
_a priori_ induction will ever extend this line _or plexus_ to man. The
developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that
will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter
up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in
his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or
downwards.[8] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an
archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be,
and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in
nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations.
Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp
and woof of their scientific formulA| respecting life, will never stand
before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any
thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present
against them.

Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors
whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all
his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him,
this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the
_genetrix omnium viventium_, or the living _mother_ on whose bosom he
shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields
beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails
not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal
principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the
forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different
forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any
apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care
and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie
grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious
_gramma_ coveted by his favorite game.

And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
But how about the preA"xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the
megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
and we will answer it.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19