ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER II. (continued 2)

... "Mr. Hunter illustrated the subject thus:—Death is apparent or real. A man dragged out of the water, and to appearance dead, is, notwithstanding, alive, according to the definition we have given. The living endowments of the individual parts are not exhausted. The sensibility may be yet roused; the nerves which convey the impression may yet so far retain their property, that other motor nerves may be influenced through them; the muscles may be once more concatenated, and drawn into a simultaneous action. That vibratory motion which we have just said may be witnessed in a muscle recently cut out of the body, may be so excited in a class of muscles—for example, in the muscles of inspiration—that the apparently dead draws an inspiration. Here is the first of a series of vital motions which excites the others, and the heart beats, and the blood circulates, and the sensibilities are restored; and the mind, which was in the condition of one asleep, is roused into activity and volition, and all the common phenomena of life are resuscitated. Such is the series of phenomena which is presented in apparent death from suffocation; but, if the death has been from an injury of some vital part, the sensibilities and properties of action in the rest of the body, though resident for a time, have lost their relations, and there is a link wanting in that chain of vital actions which restores animation. Here, then, there can be no resuscitation; and the death of the individual parts of the body rapidly succeeds the apparent death of the body.

"We perceive now that our original conception of life and the terms we use respecting it, in common parlance, are but ill-adapted to this subject when philosophically considered. We early associate life and motion so intimately that the one stands for the other. If we then investigate by anatomy, we find a curious and minute mechanism in operation, an engine and tubes for circulation, and, in short, an internal motion of every particle of the frame; and the anatomist is also led into the error of associating in his mind life with motion and organization. But when we consider the subject more closely, and divest ourselves of habits and prejudices associated with words, we perceive that, without making any vain and even dangerous attempt at definition, life is first to be contemplated as the peculiarity distinguishing one of two classes into which all matter must be arranged; the one class, which embraces all living matter, is subject to a controlling influence which resists the chemical agents, and produces a series of revolutions, in an order and at periods prescribed; the other, dead matter, is subject to lapse and change under chemical agency and the common laws of matter.

"Let us examine the body of a perfect or a complicated animal. We find each organ possessed of a different power. But there is as yet no conventional language adapted to our discourse on this subject, and that is the source of many mistakes; for when a man even like Mr. Hunter had his mind illuminated upon this science, how was he to frame his language, when every word that he used had already a meaning which had no reference to the discovery he had made—to the distinct qualities which he had ascertained to belong to the living parts?...

"The difference between dead and living matter will appear to be, that in the one instance the particles are permanently arranged and continue to exhibit their proper character, as we term it, until by ingenuity and practice some means are found to withdraw the arranging or uniting influence; and then the matter is chemically dissolved: resolves into its elements, and forms new combinations: whilst the life continues, not simply to arrange the particles, and to give them the order or organization of the animal body, but to whirl them in a series of revolutions, during all which the material is passive, the law being in the life. The order and succession of these changes and their duration do not result from the material of the frame, which is the same in all animals, but from that influence which we term life, and which is superadded to the material." (Ibid. 408.)

Writing on Function Mr. Herbert Spencer discusses the following question. Its interest to our argument is unmistakable.

"Does Structure originate Function, or does Function originate Structure? is a question about which there has been disagreement. Using the word Function in its widest signification, as the totality of all vital actions, the question amounts to this—Does Life produce Organization, or does Organization produce Life?

"To answer this question is not easy, since we habitually find the two so associated that neither seems possible without the other; and they appear uniformly to increase and decrease together.... There is, however, one fact implying that Function must be regarded as taking precedence of Structure. Of the lowest Rhizopods, which present no distinctions of parts, and nevertheless feed and grow and move about, Prof. Huxley has remarked that they exhibit Life without Organization....

"It may be argued that on the hypothesis of Evolution, Life necessarily comes before organization. On this hypothesis, organic matter in a state of homogeneous aggregation, must precede organic matter in a state of heterogeneous aggregation. But since the passing from a structureless state to a structured state, is itself a vital process, it follows that vital activity must have existed while there was yet no structure: structure could not else arise. That function takes precedence of structure, seems also implied in the definition of Life. If Life consists of inner actions so adjusted as to balance outer actions—if the actions are the substance of Life, while the adjustment of them constitutes its form; then, may we not say that the actions to be formed must come before that which forms them—that the continuous change which is the basis of function, must come before the structure which brings function into shape? Or again, since throughout all phases of Life up to the highest, every advance is the effecting of some better adjustment of inner to outer actions; and since the accompanying new complexity of structure is simply a means of making possible this better adjustment; it follows that function is from beginning to end the determining cause of structure."—Principles of Biology, by Mr. Herbert Spencer, p. 153, seq.

We now return to Kant, from whom Dr. Whewell quoted the sentence—"An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means." Passing by a metaphysical paragraph expressed in a manner too technical for the general reader, Kant's practical comment on this sentence runs as follows:—

"Dass die Zergliederer der Gewächse und Thiere, um ihre Structur zu erforschen und die Gründe einsehen zu können, warum und zu welchem Ende solche Theile, warum eine solche Lage und Verbindung der Theile und gerade diese innere Form ihnen gegeben worden, jene Maxime: dass nichts in einem solchen Geschöpf UMSONST sey, als unumgänglich nothwendig annehmen und sie eben so, als den Grundsatz der allgemeinen Naturlehre: dass Nichts von ungefähr geschehe, geltend machen, ist bekannt. In der That können sie sich auch von diesem teleologischen Grundsatze eben so wenig lossagen, als dem allgemeinen physischen, weil, so wie bei Veranlassung des letzteren gar keine Erfahrung überhaupt, so bei der des ersteren Grundsatzes kein Leitfaden für die Beobachtung einer Art von Naturdinge, die wir einmal teleologisch unter dem Begriffe der Naturzwecke gedacht haben, übrig bleiben würde.

"Denn dieser Begriff führt die Vernunft in eine ganz andere Ordnung der Dinge, als die eines blossen Mechanism der Natur, der uns hier nicht mehr genug thun will. Eine Idee soll der Möglichkeit des Naturproducts zum Grunde liegen. Weil diese aber ein absolute Einheit der Vorstellung ist, statt dessen die Materie eine Vielheit der Dinge ist, die für sich keine bestimmte Einheit der Zusammensetzung an die Hand geben kann, so muss, wenn jene Einheit der Idee, sogar als Bestimmungsgrund a priori eines Naturgesetzes der Causalität einer solchen Form des Zusammengesetzten dienen soll, der Zweck der Natur auf ALLES, was in ihrem Producte liegt, erstreckt werden; weil, wenn wir einmal dergleichen Wirkung im Ganzen auf einen übersinnlichen Bestimmungsgrund über den blinden Mechanism der Natur hinaus beziehen, wir sie auch ganz nach diesem Princip beurtheilen müssen und kein Grund da ist, die Form eines solchen Dinges noch zum Theil vom letzteren als abhängig anzunehmen, da alsdann bei der Vermischung ungleichartiger Principien, gar keine sichere Regel der Beurtheilung übrig bleiben würde." Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Section 65.

For the benefit of those who find Kant's German difficult we subjoin a neat French Translation from the pen of M. Barni.

"On sait que ceux qui dissèquent les plantes et les animaux pour en étudier la structure, et pouvoir reconnaître pourquoi et à quelle fin telles parties leur ont été données, pourquoi telle disposition et tel arrangement des parties, et précisément cette forme intérieure, admettent comme indispensablement nécessaire cette maxime que rien n'existe en vain dans ces créatures, et lui accordent une valeur égale à celle de ce principe de la physique générale, que rien n'arrive par hasard. Et en effet ils ne peuvent pas plus rejeter ce principe téléologique que le principe universel de la physique; car, de même qu'en l'absence de ce dernier il n'y aurait plus d'expérience possible en général, de même, sans le premier, il n'y aurait plus de fil conducteur pour l'observation d'une espèce de choses de la nature, que nous avons une fois conçues téléologiquement sous le concept des fins de la nature.

"En effet ce concept introduit la raison dans un tout autre ordre de choses que celui du pur mécanisme de la nature, qui ne peut plus ici nous satisfaire. Il faut qu'une idée serve de principe à la possibilité de la production de la nature. Mais comme une idée est une unité absolue de réprésentation, tandis que la matière est une pluralité de choses qui par elle-même ne peut fournir aucune unité déterminée de composition, si cette unité de l'idée doit servir, comme principe a priori, à déterminer une loi naturelle à la production d'une forme de ce genre, il faut que la fin de la nature s'étende à tout ce qui est contenu dans sa production. En effet, dès que pour expliquer un certain effet, nous cherchons, au-dessus de l'aveugle mécanisme de la nature, un principe supra-sensible et que nous l'y rapportons en général, nous devons le juger tout entier d'après ce principe; et il n'y a pas de raison pour regarder la forme de cette chose comme dépendant encore en partie de l'autre principe, car alors, dans le mélange de principes hétérogènes, il ne resterait plus de règle sûre pour le jugement." Critique du Jugement, Section 65.

Kant is not in any dress the easiest of thinkers to follow—a result possibly consequent upon the resemblance which his writings bear to trains of reasoning as they pass from the lips of one who thinks aloud. The following paragraph from another work of Dr. Whewell's may be useful to some minds as a comment upon this portion of Kant's teleology.

"There is yet one other Idea which I shall mention, though it is one about which difficulties have been raised, since the consideration of such difficulties may be instructive: the Idea of a purpose, or as it is often termed, a Final Cause, in organized bodies. It has been held, and rightly, that the assumption of a Final Cause of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an efficient cause of every event. The maxim, that in organized bodies nothing is in vain, is as necessarily true as the maxim that nothing happens by chance. I have elsewhere shown fully that this Idea is not deduced from any special facts, but is assumed as a law governing all facts in organic nature, directing the researches and interpreting the observations of physiologists. I have also remarked that it is not at variance with that other law, that plants and that animals are constructed upon general plans, of which plans, it may be, we do not see the necessity, though we see how wide is their generality. This Idea of a purpose,—of a Final Cause,—then, thus supplied by our minds, is found to be applicable throughout the organic world. It is in virtue of this Idea that we conceive animals and plants as subject to disease; for disease takes place when the parts do not fully answer their purpose; when they do not do what they ought to do. How is it then that we thus find an Idea which is supplied by our own minds, but which is exemplified in every part of the organic world? Here perhaps the answer will be readily allowed. It is because this Idea is an Idea of the Divine Mind. There is a Final Cause in the constitution of these parts of the universe, and therefore we can interpret them by means of the Idea of Final Cause. We can see a purpose, because there is a purpose. Is it too presumptuous to suppose that we can thus enter into the Ends and Purposes of the Divine Mind? We willingly grant and declare that it would be presumptuous to suppose that we can enter into them to any but a very small degree. They doubtless go immeasurably beyond our mode of understanding or conceiving them. But to a certain extent we can go. We can go so far as to see that they are Ends and Purposes. It is not a vain presumption in us to suppose that we know that the eye was made for seeing and the ear for hearing. In this the most pious of men see nothing impious: the most cautious philosophers see nothing rash. And that we can see thus far into the designs of the Divine Mind, arises, we hold, from this:—that we have an Idea of Design and of Purpose which, so far as it is merely that, is true; and so far, is Design and Purpose in the same sense in the one case and in the other."[81]

It will be well worth while to close this present series of illustrations by a review of Professor Huxley's last published and best considered positions on Teleology. He printed, in 1871, an article on Haeckel's "Natürliche Schöpfungs Geschichte," and has now entitled it "The Genealogy of Animals," and included it in his recent volume of Critiques. We may therefore assume that we here find the distinguished Biologist's deliberate opinions. He says, p. 305, "The Teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the higher Vertebrata,[82] was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless it is necessary to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day.

"Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries 'cuckoo!' and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination of its structure.

"If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the cosmic gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world as the structure of the clock to its phenomena."

Mr. Huxley's comparisons[83] are always amusing, partly because they are of an unlooked for description. They also keep up the attention of his readers or hearers. But they have one great fault—the fault we noticed in explaining the nature of analogical argument—they carry away the mind too far, and lead the reader often, sometimes the writer himself, into very serious oversights. Let us take notice how the Professor carries out his present similitude. "Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock-case, to be a learned and intelligent student of its works. He might say, 'I find here nothing but matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to end,' and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous 'tick! tick!' so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that the one thing the clock did always and without intermission was to tick, and that all the rest of its phenomena were intermittent and subordinate to ticking! For all this, it is certain that kitchen clocks are not contrived for the purpose of making a ticking noise.

"Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as the mechanical theorist, among our death-watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who would be right would be the one who should maintain that the sole thing death-watches could be sure about was the nature of the clock-works and the way they move; and that the purpose of the clock lay wholly beyond the purview of beetle faculties.

"Substitute 'cosmic vapour' for 'clock,' and 'molecules' for 'works,' and the application of the argument is obvious." (pp. 306, 7.)

One thing is very obvious here—and that is a flaw. State the case as a proposition thus—One or both of the two beetles is to the clock and its maker, as man is to the world and its Maker. A tremendous assumption—surely as sufficient to have startled Francis Bacon as the apparition of a new Idol. Is there any possible reason for elevating a death-watch—thinking in character as a death-watch—into a capable interpreter of clocks? Moreover, the ground principle of our human Teleology is that Man holds a lofty relation, not to the Universe only, but to its Maker likewise. He claims, in a word, the most sublime of all earthly kinships. The very fact that he can look with intelligent and admiring appreciation upon the works of God, justifies his belief that he has a real insight into their excellence, and is so far at least akin to the mind of God. If Mr. Huxley meant that a proportionate degree of insight into clock-making was possessed by his beetles, they would surely have been able to read the clock's dial-plate and understand the lesson conveyed by its pointers. The death-watch would at least say "labuntur horæ"—and comprehend that time was being registered—although he might even then fall far short of our human belief "pereunt et imputantur," and fail of knowing that time registers itself in a record of moral good and evil.

The truth is that all mixing up manlike attributes with brute animality, and what seems ten times worse, with machines of wood and metal, can be nothing better than an attempt to produce a sound and prolific offspring from some ill-assorted and heterogeneous hybridism.

We have adverted to this peculiarity of style before and venture upon doing so again, because all admirers of Mr. Huxley's great powers (and who can read his writings without such admiration?) may surely be justified in wishing that he would discard it at once and for ever. Its practical effect is apparently to assume the real point at issue and to cover up the tacit assumption. That he is really no chance offender in this respect may be gathered from a few instances noted at random. We have just had a couple of philosophic death-watches[84]—one a Teleologist, the other a Mechanicist—the lucubrations of both being neither exactly human, nor yet Coleopterous. We observed before a righteous clock[85]—regularly moral if regularly wound up. He has besides a machine, undescribed but endued with a gift of ratiocination[86]—and more curious still a piano[87] which listens when it is played upon, and though possessed of only one sense (hearing) succeeds in building up "endless ideas" of a certain cast and cogency. From this self-educated instrument much may of course be looked for, and accordingly we find

till it evolves from the depth of its consciousness something like an idealistic theory of sound. This hypothesis, Mr. Huxley in reply to his piano, refutes, first by an appeal to the material substance of the instrument itself; and secondly to the existence of a musician who plays upon it. Will he permit us to accept in like manner the fact of our own nobler subsistence, and also the being of One Who attunes its secret heart-strings to notes of sublime melody?

The monsters aforecited irresistibly remind us of a repartee of Goldsmith's. He wittily said that Dr. Johnson would make little fishes talk like great whales. Had they done so it may be doubted whether the Doctor's idolatrous biographer would have discovered a minnowy mind beneath their Johnsonian utterances. And we confess to a difficulty of our own. The righteous clock is indeed genuinely Huxleian, but what shall we say of his mechanical logic, his piano, and his death-watches? By way of illustrating our perplexity let us suppose some rural sexton to mix up his own instincts with those of a biological burying beetle. The destiny of all flesh would naturally be determined in the first place by a decent covering of earth. But what about its final end? Would that be an aldermanic beetle feast or a Resurgam?

Think again how a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might breathe a benevolent spirit into a much employed dissecting knife. The sharp thing would certainly entertain a repugnance to the horrors of vivisection. There might also be a denial of its utility based on the scalpel's personal experience, or perhaps a moral doubt as to whether such means are justified by the ends proposed. Would Mr. Huxley listen to the remonstrance and undertake to lift up his powerful voice at Paris or at Berlin besides a few other remote places which need not be particularized?

Or finally what ear would he lend to a magnifying glass accustomed to habits of observation and possessed by the soul of Spurzheim. Suppose it should affirm that a slice of Destructiveness is recognizably different in structure from a section of Benevolence; and Acquisitiveness in like manner distinguishable from Ideality! Yet a humanitarian scalpel or Spurzheim magnifying glass may be thought a Huxleian phenomenon.

A truce to such mongrel meditations. We gladly turn away from them and continue our quotations from the Professor's sentiments delivered in propria persona, recommencing at the place where our last extract broke off. (p. 307.)

"The teleological and the mechanical views of nature, are not necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe."

We quite agree with Mr. Huxley that Mechanism never can exclude final causes, and that a thorough-going theory of Evolution (taken apart from its excrescences) disables the theorist from all real disproof of intention or Design. As we said before, the question of how the theorist's primordial arrangement began, is left unprovided for. And if a beginning, so certainly an end. The more steadily the first state of the Universe conceivable by Science is contemplated, the wider and more determinate the view thus taken, the more evident it becomes that the ground occupied by Natural Theology is not fenced off by the iron pale of Mechanism. The fencer is (as Huxley says) "at the mercy of the Teleologist."

The Professor's next sentence deserves careful consideration—"On the other hand, if the teleologists assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential incident—the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its function."

How far this criticism holds good of many well-meant treatises filled with special instances of Design is a question for candid consideration. Meantime the whole sentence amounts to this conclusion:—We must distinguish between such wide arguments as Baden Powell's, and the details of certain writers who have dealt with what they thought good examples and illustrations of a grand universal principle. And that such is Mr. Huxley's meaning we may perceive from another paragraph immediately preceding our first extract. (p. 305.)

"In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service which the Origin of Species has done, in favouring what he terms the 'causal or mechanical' view of living nature as opposed to the 'teleological or vitalistic' view. And no doubt it is quite true that the doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer."

Now, such being the state of facts, we may refuse to say with Huxley that the following question (asked p. 307) is "not irrational." "Why trouble oneself about matters which are out of reach, when the working of the mechanism itself, which is of infinite practical importance, affords scope for all our energies?"

We cannot forego our trouble, for two reasons. First, according to the statements before quoted, Mr. Darwin's researches have improved the case for Teleology. Advocates of Design may therefore take courage, they have gained a potent alliance. Secondly, "the practical working of the Mechanism itself" is very far, we think, from being our All—so far, indeed, that it sinks into insignificance compared with the hope of Immortality. Our highest interest lies in gathering such information as we can regarding Him with Whom we have to do as the Arbiter of our future existence. Above all things, we desire Him to be our Father and our Friend. Perchance His attributes are not matters out of reach. He may be very near to every one of us, if we are indeed His Offspring.

Another opinion of Professor Huxley's is of great auxiliary value to the argument from Design. The structures mentioned have to some minds appeared as its most serious difficulties. "Professor Haeckel," he explains, "has invented a new and convenient name, 'Dysteleology,' for the study of the 'purposelessnesses' which are observable in living organisms—such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways. If we are to assume, as evolutionists in general do, that useless organs atrophy, such cases as the existence of lateral rudiments of toes, in the foot of a horse, place us in a dilemma. For, either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case, considering that the horse has existed in its present form since the Pliocene epoch, they surely ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as arguments against Teleology." (p. 307.) It would be hard to overestimate the value of this opinion, still more hard to overrate its genuine and outspoken honesty.

Mr. Huxley places at the end of his recent volume a passage from Bishop Berkeley which we will venture to borrow by way of conclusion to this lengthy note:—

"You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is forced upwards in a round column to a certain height, at which it breaks and falls back into the basin from whence it rose; its ascent as well as its descent proceeding from the same uniform law or principle of gravitation. Just so, the same principles which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense."

Adsit omen! May it be even thus with our large-minded Professor and with all other sovereign princes of Biology—Ἵλεως Ἀσκληπίος !