As Regards Protoplasm, etc. (continued 2)

Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization may be viewed as our first objection. In ultimate abstraction, that is, the only agency postulated by Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards actually existent beings and actually existent conditions, it is hardly possible to deny any possibility whatever to infinitude. If told, for example, that the elephant, if only obliged infinitely to run, might be converted into the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically attributed to a succession of dearths in infinite time that only left the leaves of trees for long-necked animals to live on, we should be similarly situated as regards denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a field for the negation than for the affirmation; and that, on the question of fact, nothing is capable of being determined. But we can also say more than that—we can say that any fruitful application even of infinite time to the general problem of difference in the world is inconceivable. To explain all from an absolute beginning requires us to commence with nothing; but to this nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an entity, a something, a difference added to the original identity: whence or how came time? Time cannot account for its own self; how is it that there is such a thing as time? Then no conceivable brooding even of infinite time could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and space, further, could ever conceivably thicken into matter. 133How is it there is such a thing as matter? Lastly, so far, no conceivable brooding, or even gyrating, of a single matter in time and space could account for the specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as we see and know it. Time, space, matter, and the whole inorganic world, thus remain impassive to the action even of infinite time; all these differences remain incapable of being accounted for so.

But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this reference, which, though scientifically indefensible, is quite possible, how about the transition of the inorganic into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that, for food, the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts. Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate of ammonia; can any action of sun, or air, or electricity, be conceived to develop a cell—or even so much lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to be realized to thought. Then we have just to think for a moment of the vast differences into which, for the production of the present organized world, this cell must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we cannot well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we must pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.

It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin claims a solution of this problem. Conditions concern all that relates to air, heat, light, land, water, and whatever they imply. Our second objection, consequently, is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account for present organized differences, from a single cell. Geological time, for example, falls short, after all, of infinite time; or, in known geological eras, let us calculate them as liberally as we may, there is not time 134enough to account for the presently-existing varieties, from one, or even several, primordial forms. So to speak, it is not in geological time to account for the transformation of the elephant into the stag from acceleration, or for that of the stag into the elephant from retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly of the growth of the neck of the giraffe, or even of the elevation of the monkey into man. Moreover, time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves. It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable effluvia ever creating the nerve by which they are felt, and so gradually the Schneiderian membrane, nose, and whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these effluvia are the conditions of smell, and, ex hypothesi, ought to have created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air, ever by any length of time, indent into the sensitive cell, eyes, and a pair of eyes—ears, and a pair of ears? Light conceivably might shine for ever without such a wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly, for delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the ear is scarcely inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible to think of a whole infinitude of those fitful and fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call sound, without indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.

A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the play of natural contingency in regard to the vicissitudes of conditions, has no title to be named selection. Naturalists have long known and spoken of the “influence of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the first to apply the term selection to the action of these, and thus convert accident into design. The agency to which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes which he would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency 135of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious to call such process, or such non-process, by a term involving foresight and a purpose. We have here, indeed, only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer who, many years ago, said “even the genera are wholly a prey to the changes of the external universal life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin sees, but it never struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded metaphor proved! It has become a principle, a law, and been transferred by very genuine men into their own sciences of philology and what not. People will wonder at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability of such a word to the processes of nature referred to by Mr. Darwin, is to point out also the impossibility of any such contingencies proceeding, by graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious whole—by which we are surrounded. This rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it is utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such agency as natural contingency in geological, or infinite, or any time. But it is this which the word selection tends to conceal.

We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact of “reversion” or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges his own failure. We thus see that the species as species is something independent, and holds its own insita vis naturæ within itself.

Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value to Mr. Darwin’s book; nor even his ready ingenuity, whatever interest it may lend: it is the material information it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges 136somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture so copiously exemplified, on occasion of a few trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that natural conjecture is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory always to the personally ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the improvement of the race; or that, the weakest being always necessarily left at home, the improvement was balanced by deterioration; or that the ablest were necessarily the most exposed to danger, and so, etc., etc., according, to ingenuity usque ad infinitum. Trustworthy conclusion is not possible to this method, but only to the induction of facts, or to scientific demonstration.

Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able to level out the difference between organic and inorganic, or between genera and genera or species and species. The differences persist despite of both; the distributed identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, is Mr. Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective idea by any reference to time and conditions. Living beings do exist in a mighty chain from the moss to the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded in the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural growth of this into that. That chain is itself the most brilliant stamp, the sign-manual, of design. On every ledge of nature, from the lowest to the highest, there is a life that is its,—a creature to represent it, reflect it—so to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest link of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself, which is the summation of this universe; man, that includes in himself all other links and their single secret—the personified universe, the subject of the world. 137Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he only tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of course.

It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in this discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved the conception of thought and life “as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it,” neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to reply that, if “independent of” means here “unconnected with,” we have had no such object. We have had no object whatever, in fact, but to resist, now the extravagant assertion that all organized tissue, from the lichen to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally extravagant assertion that life and thought are but ordinary products of molecular chemistry. As regards the latter assertion, we have endeavored to show that the processes of vital organization (as self-production, etc.) belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different from, those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical neutralization; that life, then, is no mere product of matter as matter; that if no life can be pointed to independent of matter, neither is there any life-stuff independent of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new and higher force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and higher force to mechanics, etc. As for thought, the endeavor was to show that it was as independent on the one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used, summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then, is not to be reached by any bridge from matter, that is a hybrid of both, and explains the connection. The relation of matter to mind is not to be explained as a transition, but as a contrecoup. In this relation, however, it is not the material, but the mental side, which the whole universe declares to be the dominant one.

138As regards any objection to the arguments which we have brought against the identity of protoplasm, again, these will lie in the phrase, probably, “difference not of kind, but degree,” or in the word “modification.” The “phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the overwhelming reason that an infinitude of various kinds exist in it, each of which is self-productive and uninterchangeable with the rest, then for Mr. Huxley’s own reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals only organic. As for the objection “modification,” again, the same consideration of generic difference must prove fatal to it. This were otherwise, indeed, could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have seen, they have failed. And this will be always so: who dogs identity, difference dogs him. It is quite a justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the identity that obtains between veins and arteries on the one hand, as between these and capillaries on the other; but all the time the difference is behind us; and when we turn to look, we see, for circulation, the valves of the veins and the elastic coats of the arteries as opposed to one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable walls of the capillaries as opposed to both.

Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow the word “modification” to efface them in the interest of the identity claimed for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm is not bone-protoplasm, nor the protoplasm of the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant us in regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle as identical with the 139protoplasm of its sting. Things that originate alike may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced totally different. Such eventuation must be held competent to what can only be named generic or specific difference. The “child” is only “father of the man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course of an ordinary life, we are told, has totally changed himself, not once, but many times, retaining at the last not one single particle of matter with which he set out. Such eventuations, whether called modifications or not, certainly involve essential difference. And so situated are the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle, which, whether compared with the protoplasm of the nettle-sting, or with that in which they originated, must be held to here assumed, by their own actions, indisputable differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form, substance, and faculty.

Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in reference to modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary when identity shall be admitted to cease and difference to begin. There are the old Greek puzzles of the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many grains, or how many hairs, may we remove before a heap of wheat is no heap, or a head of hair bald? These concern quantity alone; but, in other cases, bone, muscle, brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a quantitative, but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such differences, the word modification can be regarded as but a cloak, under which identity is to be shuffled into difference, but remain identity all the same. The brick is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake it and paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by 140the baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr. Huxley calls the “artifice” not to be taken into account, leave alone the “potter?” The strong firm rope is about as exact an example of modification proper—modification of the weak loose hemp—as can well be found; but are we to exclude from our consideration the whole element of difference due to the hand and brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones which is potentially a church, the former Trinity College Church. Were this church again realized, would it be fair to call it a mere modification of the previous stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered fowl. Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,” that was to his “faire Pertelotte” so dear:—

“His comb was redder than the fine corall,

Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;

His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;

Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);

His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,

And like the burned gold was his color.”

Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb, wattles, spurs, and all—a modified yolk, as to call the church but modified stones? If, in the latter case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable, seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at least quite as well marked in the former? It requires but a slight analysis to detect that all the stones in question are marked and numbered; but will any analysis point out within the shell the various parts that only need arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men that may take the stones, and, in a re-erected Trinity College Church, realize anew the idea of its architect, 141in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes the idea should, in the one case, be from without, and, in the other, from within, is no reason for seeing more modification and less wonder in the latter than the former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing the fowl in the egg, and as identical with the egg, than for seeing a re-built Trinity College Church as identical with its unarranged materials. A part cannot be taken for the whole, whether in space or in time. Mr. Huxley misses this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of which, that he will not see the difference into which, progress is made. As the idea of the church has the stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its commencement. But to this idea, and in both cases, the terminal additions belong, quite as much as the initial materials. If the idea, then, add sulphur, phosphorus, iron, and what not, it must be credited with these not less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it were a charm to destroy all the industry of time. The protoplasm of the egg of the fowl is no more the fowl than the stones the church; and to identify, by juggle of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different, is but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we have so often seen, difference is as much present at first as at last. Even in its germ, even in its initial identity, to call it so, protoplasm is already different, for it issues in differences infinite.

Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be acknowledged, is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley. In the wonder that is usually expressed, for example, at Oken’s identification of the skull with so many 142vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power that could, in the end, so differentiate them. If the cornea of the eye and the enamel of the teeth are alike but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive. Our wonder is how, for one idea, protoplasm could become one thing here, and, for another idea, another so different thing there. We are more curious about the modification than the protoplasm. In the difference, rather than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder lies. Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can detect no difference in them. They are to us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable matter an element of difference so pervading and so persistent has been impressed, that, of them all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is protoplasm: yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the mushroom’s. In short, it is quite evident that the word modification, if it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw, the difference; which difference, moreover, is one of kind and not of degree.

This consideration of possible objections, then, is the last we have to attend to; and it only remains to draw the general conclusion. All animal and vegetable organisms are alike in power, in form, and in substance, only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and 143vegetable organisms are but properties of the molecular affections of their chemical constituents, only if the functions of the protoplasm, of which they are composed, are but properties of the molecular affections of its chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative in both clauses, there has been no object but to demonstrate, on the one hand, the infinite non-identity of protoplasm, and, on the other, the dependence of its functions upon other factors than its molecular constituents.

In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all organisms consist alike of the same life-matter, which life-matter is, for its part, due only to chemistry, must be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the materialism he would found on it.

145ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:

PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.

147