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If in-and-in breeding occur, as it may do amongst human beings in a locality much removed from other places of habitation, it may even happen that what may be looked upon as a variety of the human race may arise, though when it arises it is always easy to wipe it out and restore things to the normal by the introduction of fresh blood, to use the misleading term commonly employed, where the Biblical word "seed" comes much nearer to the facts.
Thus there is a well-authenticated case in France (in Brittany if I remember right) of a six-fingered race which existed for a number of generations in a very isolated place and was restored to five-fingeredness when an increase in the populousness of the district permitted a wider selection in the matter of marriages.
And similarly, not long ago an account was published of an albino race somewhere in Canada which had acquired a special name.
Perhaps it has been wiped out by this time by wider marriages, though these might be effected with greater difficulty by albinos than by six-fingered persons. At any rate no one can doubt that it might at any time be wiped out by such marriages, though even when apparently wiped out, sporadic cases might be expected to occur: what the breeders call "throws-back," when they see an animal which resembles some ancestor further back in the line of descent than its actual progenitors. Certainly the most remarkable instance of the reliance which we have come to feel respecting this matter of inheritance is that which was afforded by a recent case of disputed paternity interesting on both sides of the Atlantic, since the events in dispute occurred in America and the property and the dispute concerning it were in England.
It was obviously a most difficult and disputable case, but the judge, a shrewd observer, noticed, when the putative father was in the box, a feature in his countenance which seemed closely to resemble what was to be seen in the child which he claimed to be his own. A careful examination of the parents and of the child was made by an eminent sculptor, accustomed to minute observation of small features of variety in those sitting to him as models.
He reported and showed to the court that there were remarkable features in the head of the child which resembled, on the one hand an unusual configuration in the mother—or the woman who claimed to be the mother—and on the other a well-marked feature in her husband. And as a result the father and mother won their case, and were proclaimed the parents of the child because of the resemblance of these features; and, if we think for a moment, we shall see, because also of the reliance which the human race has come to place in the fidelity of inheritance, of its perfect certainty, so to speak, that a duck will not come out of a hen's egg, and the fact of this reliance on a generally received truth remains, whatever may be said as to the legal aspect of such evidence.
Inheritance is a fact recognised by everybody, and the only reason why we refuse to wonder at it is because, like other wonderful yet everyday facts, such as the growth of a great tree from a tiny seed, it is so everyday that we have ceased to wonder at it. It is there: we know that. But have we any kind of idea how it comes about? The duck does not, as a matter of common experience, come out of a hen's egg. Why does it come out of a duck's egg? Why doesn't it come out, if only rarely, from a hen's egg? In other words, do we know what it is that explains inheritance or how it is that there is such a thing as inheritance? Well, candour obliges me to say that we do not. In spite of all the work which has been expended upon this question we are totally ignorant of the mechanism of heredity. Nevertheless it will be instructive to glance at the theories which have been put forward to explain this matter.
All living things spring from a small germ, and in the vast majority of cases this germ is the product in part of the male and in part of the female parent. It is therefore natural that we should in the first place turn our attention to this germ and ask ourselves whether there is anything in its construction which will give us the key of the mystery. There is not, at least there is nothing definite as shown by our most powerful microscopes. To be sure there is a remarkable substance, called chromatin because of its capacity for taking up certain dyes, which evidently plays some profoundly important part in the processes of development. We may suspect that this is the thing which carries the physical characteristics from one generation to another, but we cannot prove it; and though some authorities think that it is, others deny it. Even if it be, it can hardly be supposed that microscopic research will ever be able to establish the fact, and that for reasons which must now be explained.
Let us suppose that we visit a vast botanic garden, and in the seed-time of each of the plants therein contained select from each plant a single ripe seed. It is clear that, if we take home that collection of seeds, we shall have in them a miniature picture of the garden from which they were culled, or at least we shall be in possession of the potentiality of such a garden, for, if we sow these seeds and have the good fortune to see them all develop, take root and grow, we shall actually possess a replica of the garden from which they came. Not exactly, it may be urged, for the distribution or arrangement of the seeds must have been carefully looked to, if the gardens are to resemble each other otherwise than in the mere possession of identical plants. I admit the truth of this, but cannot for the moment discuss it. At any rate we should have the same plants in both gardens.
On this analogy, many have suggested that every organ in the body—we must go further, and say that every marked feature in every organ in the body—is represented in the germ by a seed which can grow, under favourable circumstances, into just such another organ or feature of an organ. This was the theory put forward by Darwin under the name of "pangenesis," and by others under other titles with which it is unnecessary to burden these pages. All these theories have been summed together under the name "micromeristic," that is small-fragmented, or again, "particulate," since they all postulate the existence in the germ of innumerable small fragments—seeds—which are capable of growing into complete plants or organs under favourable circumstances. Again, this, even if true, does not by any means exhaust the matter, for it does not explain why the seed of the eye implants itself and grows in the right place in the head instead of making a home for itself, let us say, in the sole of the foot. But again we must pass over that matter.
There is nothing inherently impossible in this theory; indeed, if we allow that the transmission of inheritable characteristics is purely material, and it may be, there is only one other conceivable way in which it can occur. It is true that the seeds must be almost innumerable, but the germ, though small, is capable of accommodating an almost innumerable number of independent factors, if the prevalent views as to the constitution of matter are to be believed. And, as it is quite inconceivable that we can ever have microscopes which could detect such minute objects as the ultimate bricks of which the atom—no, not even the atoms themselves which compose the germ—consists, it is impossible that we should be able to say that the seed-theory is untrue. Even if we could see these ultimate constituents it is in the last degree unlikely that they would have any resemblance to the things which are, on this theory to grow from them, any more than the acorn resembles the oak which is to spring from it.
But observe! the germ on this view must contain not only seeds from the immediate parents but from many, perhaps all, of the older generations of the family, otherwise how are we to account for the appearance of ancestral peculiarities which the father and mother do not show? Moreover, since very minute things, like the inner angle of the eyebrow, may independently vary, there must be an enormous number of seeds apart altogether from the considerations alluded to in the last paragraph. And many authorities who have closely considered the question have come to the conclusion that the complexities introduced would be so great that it is impossible to believe in any micromeristic theory.
Then, of course, we must look out for some other explanation, and some have suggested that it is to be found in memory—the memory of the germ of what it was once part and the anticipation of what it may once more be. This again is an explanation not susceptible of proof along the lines of a chemical experiment, but not necessarily, therefore, untrue. Of course there are two ideas as to memory. If we are pure materialists and imagine every memory in our possession as something stamped, in some wholly incomprehensible manner, on some cell of our brain and looked at there, by some wholly inconceivable agency, when we sit down to think of past days, then we must look on the germ, under the "mnemic" or memory theory as consisting of fragments each of them impressed with the "memory" of some particular organ or feature of the body, and lo! we find ourselves back again in micromerism. If we are to take a non-materialistic view of memory we are plunged into a metaphysical discussion which cannot here be pursued. A third explanation, which by the way explains nothing, is that the whole matter is one of "arrangement," to which we shall return at the close of this paper.
The mechanism of inheritance must either be physical[33] or it must be non-physical; that is, immaterial. This is what emerges from our discussion, and so far as science goes to-day it must be admitted that neither of these explanations can be said to be accepted generally by men of science or proved—perhaps even capable of proof—by scientific methods. If we know little or nothing about the mechanism of inheritance, can we and do we know anything about the laws under which it works, or has it any laws? Or are its operations a mere chance-medley? It is hardly necessary to ask the latter question, for chance-medley could not lead to regular operations—operations so regular that a court of law may act upon their evidence. Yes: we answer to the first question very lightly but without perhaps always thinking what that affirmative answer implies, a point to be considered in a moment. It may at once be said that we do now know a good deal about the laws under which inheritance works itself out, and that knowledge, as most people are now aware, is due to the quiet and for a time forgotten labours of Johann Gregor Mendel, once Abbot of the Augustinian Abbey of Bruenn, a prelate of that Church which loud-voiced ignoramuses are never tired of proclaiming to have been from the beginning even down to the present day the impassioned and deadly enemy of all scientific progress. Mendel saw that former workers at inheritance had been directing their attention to the tout ensemble of an individual or natural object; his idea was analytical in its nature, for he directed his attention to individual characteristics, such as stature or colour, or the like. And having thus directed his attention and confined his labours mainly to plants, since the study of generations of most animals is too lengthy a process for one man to carry out, he did in fact discover that there are very definite laws, capable even of numerical statement, under which inheritance acts. There is no need to explain or discuss them here: suffice it to say that there are such laws,[34] as is now admitted by an overwhelming majority of the biologists of to-day. Mendel's facts were hidden in a somewhat obscure journal; they lay dormant, much to his annoyance, during his lifetime. Years after his death his papers were unearthed, and his discoveries have been proclaimed as being as fundamental to biology as those of Newton and Dalton to other sciences.
There are, then, laws. That means one of two things: either that these laws arose by chance-medley, or that some one enacted them. It seems impossible, when one surveys the orderly operations of Nature, among which are those conducted under the laws known by the name of their discoverer, Mendel—it seems wholly impossible that these operations arose by chance-medley. To me, at any rate, any such explanation is wholly unthinkable. But if it be an impossible explanation, as I and many thousands, not to say millions, of other persons believe, then there is no other way out of it than that these operations must have been planned by some one; in other words, that there must have been a Creator and Deviser of the world.
People hide from this explanation, and one of the favourite sandbanks in which this particular kind of human ostrich plunges its head is "Nature." "Nature does this," and "Nature does that," forgetting entirely the fact that "Nature" is a mere personification and means either chance-medley or a Creator, according to the old dilemma. There is a very curious example of this inability or unwillingness to admit—perhaps even to understand—the force of this argument exhibited by those to whom one would suppose that it would come home with overpowering force: I mean, of course, the Mendelians.
The most learned of these, and one of the most open-minded of men, hints in one place that though he does not think it necessary himself to believe it, yet it might at least be suggested that, if in a certain organism we find things so placed that a certain combination is bound to emerge in a certain generation, such a state of affairs might have been prearranged. Now, if it was prearranged, the awful fact emerges that there must have been an arranger; in other words, a creative power. This explanation is taboo in certain circles. But one may reasonably ask, "What then?" Is it really suggested that these orderly sets of occurrences may occur not once or twice only but thousands and thousands of times, and this may all happen by chance? A very distant acquaintance with the mathematics of probability will show that this is a wholly untenable theory. We are generally answered by some purely verbal explanation, like the personification of "Nature" already alluded to.
Thus, in a recent discussion on inheritance in a Presidential Address to the British Association, to which I have already alluded, the writer with whose explanation I have just been dealing states that he thinks it "unlikely" that the factors of inheritance are "in any simple or literal sense material particles," and proceeds thus: "I suspect rather that their properties depend on some phenomenon of arrangement." Now, in the first place, this is no explanation at all, for the mechanism of inheritance must be either material or immaterial. If there is a phenomenon of "arrangement" there must be something to be "arranged," and this something can hardly be other than material if it is to be "arranged" at all. But let that pass. What is far more important is to remember that if a thing is to be "arranged" there must be somebody to "arrange" it, for chance-medley cannot "arrange" anything in an orderly manner; or if it could do so once, cannot be supposed capable of doing it a second time in a precisely similar manner, not to say capable of doing it countless thousands of times.
If we go into a great museum our first idea, perhaps our last, concerns the arrangement found therein. But it may safely be said that no sane person ever entertained that idea without being perfectly aware that the arrangement was made by human hands, controlled, in the last resort, by the brain of the curator of the museum. Now, in a sense, the living body is a museum containing specimens of different kinds of cells. There are brain-cells, liver-cells, bone-cells, scores of different varieties of cells, and all of them, so to speak, are arranged in their appropriate cases.
If we go to the brain-case we can search it through and through without finding a liver-cell, any more than we should find a typical brain-cell embedded in the marrow of one of the bones. The different specimens all occupy their appropriate positions. How did they get there? The future animal, like animals of all kinds, including man, commences as a single cell. All save a few interesting but at present negligible cases are composed of elements drawn from male and female parents. This cell divides up into a multitude of others. At first these are to all appearances identical, but later they begin to differentiate, at first into three classes and afterwards into the multitude of different cells of which the body is composed. Further, these groups of cells become aggregated in appropriate groups, cells of one kind uniting with cells of the same kind and with no others. Here we have to do with arrangement, consummately skilful arrangement, an arrangement which practically never fails, for, leaving aside the case of monstrosity, a consideration of which would detain us too long, not merely are the various cells all placed in their proper positions, as we have seen, but their aggregation, the individual, is so formed as to belong to the proper compartment of that large museum, the world—the same compartment as that occupied by his progenitors. Neither the particulate nor the chemical theories help us here. The mnemic would, but it has its initial and insuperable difficulty, pointed out in another article in this volume, that, as you must have an experience before you can remember it, it in no way accounts for the first operation of arrangement. As to the material explanations, particulate or chemical, they amount to something like this: you have half a cart-load of bricks from one yard and half a cart-load from another, and when the bricks are dumped down in an appropriate place they form a little house, just like those occupied by the managers of the brickyards. So they may, but no one in his sense supposes that they will thus arrange themselves of their own power. Some one must arrange them. Who arranges the tiny bricks of which the animal body consists, or what arranges them? To revert to our previous example of the garden; suppose that we bring back from that which we desire to copy a bag of seeds representing all the plants which it contains. We have a plot of land of the same size as our example; we dig it and we dung it and then we scatter our seeds perfectly haphazard over its surface. What are the odds as to their coming up in an exactly similar pattern to those in the other garden. Mathematicians, I suppose, could calculate the probabilities, but they must be infinitesimally small. Yet in the case of the animal the pattern is always observed.
It is quite useless for any one, however eminent an authority he may be, to dismiss the matter by saying "It is a phenomenon of arrangement," for that begs the whole question. A Martian visitor taken to Westminster Abbey and told that its construction was a "phenomenon of arrangement" might be expected to turn a scornful eye upon his cicerone and reply, "Any fool can see that, but who arranged it?"
Hence, though wild horses would not drag such an admission from many, we are irresistibly compelled to adopt the theory of a Creator and a Maintainer also of nature and its operations—so-called—if we are to escape from the absurdities involved in any other explanation. Thus there are very important and fundamental matters to be deduced from the very little which we know about inheritance, just as there are from a hundred and one other lines of consideration related to this world and its contents. We do not know very much—it may fairly be said we know nothing as to the vehicle of inheritance. We know a little, but it is still a very little even in comparison with what we may yet come to know as the result of careful and long-continued experiment, about the laws of inheritance. What we do learn from our knowledge, such as it is, is the fact that we can give no intelligent or intelligible explanation of the facts brought before us except on the hypothesis of a Creator and Maintainer of all things.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: A third explanation, that the mechanism of inheritance is of a chemical character, is now being put forward, and some mention of this view, which is by no means one of general acceptance, will be found in another article in this volume.]
[Footnote 34: An account of them will be found in A Century of Scientific Thought, by the present writer, published by Messrs. Burns & Oates.]
VII. "SPECIAL CREATION"
Professor Scott, of Princeton, has recently given to the public in his Westbrook Lectures[35] an exceedingly impartial, convincing, and lucid statement of the evidence for the theory of evolution or transformism. On one point of terminology a few observations may not be amiss, since there is a certain amount of confusion still existing in the minds of many persons which can be and ought to be cleared up. Throughout his book Professor Scott contrasts evolution with what he calls "special creation." In so doing he is evidently in no way anxious to deny the fact that there is a Creator, and that evolution may fairly be regarded as His method of creation. In one passage he expressly states that "acceptance of the theory of evolution by no means excludes belief in a creative plan."
And again, when dealing with the palaeontological evidence in favour of evolution, he points out that Cuvier and Agassiz, examining it as it was known in their day, interpreted the facts as the carrying out of a systematic creative plan, an interpretation which the author claims "is not at all invalidated by the acceptance of the evolutionary theory." He is not, we need hardly say, in any way singular in taking up this attitude, since it was held by Darwin, by Wallace, by Huxley, and by other sturdy defenders of the doctrine of evolution.
Yet, just as at the time that Darwin's views were first made public, many thought that they were subversive of Christianity, so, even now, some whose acquaintance with the problem and its history is of a superficial character, are inclined when they see the word creation, even with the qualifying adjective "special" prefixed to it, used in contradistinction to evolution, to imagine that the theory of creation, and of course of a Creator, must fall to the ground if evolution should be proved to be the true explanation of living things and their diversities.
It is more than a little difficult for us, living at the present day, to understand this curious frame of mind; yet it certainly existed, and existed where it might least have been expected to exist. Nor is it quite extinct to-day, though it only lingers in the less instructed class of persons. The misconception arose from a confusion between the fact and the method of creation. As to the former, no Catholic, no Christian, no theist has any kind of doubt; indeed there are those who could not be classified under any of those categories who still would be prepared to admit that there must be a First Cause as the explanation of the universe. Some of them, whose reasoning is a little difficult to follow, seem to be content with an immanent, blind god, a mere mainspring to the clock, making it move, no doubt, but otherwise powerless. If we neglect—in a mathematical sense—those who adopt the agnostic attitude; content themselves with the formula ignoramus et ignorabimus of Du Bois Reymond, and confine their investigations to the machine as a going machine without inquiring how it came to be a machine or what set it to work, we shall, I think, find that most people who have really thought out the question admit that the only reasonable explanation of things as they are, is the postulation of a Free First Cause; in other words, an Omnipotent Creator of the universe. Such, of course, is the teaching of the Scriptures and of the Church, and it must be admitted that neither of them carries us very much further in this matter. In fact, whilst both are perfectly clear and definite about the fact of creation, neither of them has much to say about the method. Yet, as all admit, evolution concerns only the method and tells us absolutely nothing about the cause.
Being omnipotent, it is obvious that its Maker might have created the universe in any way which seemed good to Him—for example, all at once out of nothing just as it stands at this moment. Such a thing would not be impossible to Omnipotence; and, as we know, Fallopius, suddenly confronted by the problems of fossils in the sixteenth century, did suggest that they were created just as they were, and that they had never been anything else. So did Philip Gosse some two and a half centuries later.
There is nothing more sure than that the world was not created just as it is. Reason and Scripture both teach us that, and geology makes it quite clear that the appearance of living things upon the earth has been successive; that groups of living things, like the giant saurians, which were once the dominant zoological objects, had their day and have gone, as we may suppose, for ever. A few very lowly forms, like the lamp-shells, have persisted almost throughout the history of life on the earth, but on the whole the picture which we see is one of appearances, culminations, and disappearances of successive races of living things. There was a time when Trilobites, crustaceans whose nearest living representatives are the King-Crabs, first became features of the fauna of the earth. Then they increased to such an extent as to become the most prominent feature. Then they declined in importance, disappeared, and for uncounted ages have existed only as fossils. Thus we conclude that the creation of species was a progressive affair, just as the creation of individuals is a successive affair, for every living thing, coming as it does into existence by the power of the Creator, is His creation and in a very real sense a special creation. Now we know very well how living things come into existence to-day; can we form any idea as to how they originated in the beginning? Milton, in his crude description in Paradise Lost, pictured living things as gradually rising out of and extricating themselves from the soil.
"The grassy clods now calved, now half appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brindled mane; the ounce, The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks: the swift stag from underground Bore up his branching head: scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, up heaved His vastness."
In this description Milton probably represented the ideas of his day—a day penetrated with literal interpretation of the Scripture, though it is well to recall to our minds the fact that not one word or idea of the above is contained in the Bible. The only suggestion is that the body of Adam was fashioned from the "slime of the earth," the precise meaning of which phrase has never been defined by the Church.
Again, we have to say that the Miltonic scheme is not impossible, any more than any other scheme is impossible, but we may further say that it is more than improbable, and with every reverence we may add that to us it does not seem to be specially consonant with the greatness and wisdom of God. There remains the derivative form of creation, compendiously styled evolution. That this also is a possible method of creation no one will deny, and it has been discussed as such by many of the greatest thinkers in the history of the Church. We can consider it, therefore, from the point of fact or of knowledge as we now possess it, and we can do so without imagining that, in so doing, we are contemplating a method which is anything else but the carrying out of a creative plan, existing perfect and complete and from all eternity in the mind of the Being Whose conception it was and by whose fiat it came to pass. Moreover, each form produced is a special creation, since it was specially designed to be as it is and to appear when it did, just as the clockmaker intends his clock to strike twelve at noon, though he can hardly be said to make it strike at that moment. Hence to place special creation in antagonism to evolution is really to use an ambiguous phraseology. No doubt it is not easy to find the proper phraseology. Some have employed the terms "immediate" and "mediate," to which also a certain amount of ambiguity is attached. Perhaps "direct" and "derivative" might convey more accurate ideas; but whatever terminology we adopt, we are still safe in saying that whether God makes things or makes them make themselves He is creating them and specially creating them.
This is not the place to enter into any elaborate discussion as to the truth of the theory of evolution. Few will be found to deny the statement that it is a theory which does explain Nature as we see it and as we learn its history in the past, but that does not necessarily prove that it is true. St. Thomas Aquinas, dealing with the movements of the planets, makes a very important statement when he tells us, in so many words, that, though the hypothesis with which he is dealing would explain the appearances which he was seeking to explain, that does not prove that it is the true explanation, since the real answer to the riddle may be one then unknown to him. There are, however, one or two points it may be useful to consider before we leave the question.
That evolution may occur within a class seems to be quite certain. The case of the Porto Santo rabbits, one of many cited by Darwin or brought to knowledge since his time, will make clear what is meant. Porto Santo is a small island, not far from Madeira, on which a Portuguese navigator, named Zarco, let loose, somewhere about the year 1420, a doe and a recently born litter of rabbits, which we may feel quite sure belonged to one of those domestic breeds which have all been derived from the wild rabbit of Europe known to zoologists as Lepus Cuniculus. The island was a favourable spot for the rabbits, for there do not appear to have been any carnivorous beasts or birds to harry them, nor were there other land mammals competing with them for food; and, as a result, we are told that they had so far increased and multiplied in forty years as to be described as "innumerable." In four and a half centuries these rabbits had become so different from any European rabbits that Haeckel described them as a species apart, and named it Lepus Huxlei. This rabbit is much smaller than the European form, being described as more like a large rat than a rabbit. Its colour is very different from its European relatives; it has curious nocturnal habits; it is exceedingly wild and untamable. Most remarkable of all, and most conclusive as to specific difference, Mr. Bartlett, the highly skilled head keeper of the London Zoological Gardens, utterly failed to induce the two males which were brought over to those gardens to associate with or to breed with the females of various other breeds of rabbits which were repeatedly placed with them. If the history of these Porto Santo rabbits had been unknown to us, instead of being a matter as to which there can be no doubt, every naturalist would at once have accepted them as a separate species. We need not hesitate, it appears, to do so and to admit that it is a new species which has been produced within historic times and under conditions with which we are fully acquainted. It may, however, be argued, and quite fairly argued, that such a process of evolution, though definitely proved, is a very different thing from such an evolution as would permit of a common ancestry for animals so far apart, for example, as a whale and a rabbit, or perhaps even nearer in relationship, as between a lion and a seal. To discuss this further would require a dissertation on the highly involved question of species and varieties, and that is not now to be attempted. What, however, may be said is that the difficulties presented by what is called phylogeny—that is, the relationships of different classes to one another—are so great as to have led more than one man of science to proclaim his belief that evolution has been poly—and not mono—phyletic. Such is the view which has been enunciated by Father Wasmann, S.J., whose authority on a point of this kind is paramount. It has also been upheld by Professor Bateson, a man widely separated from the Jesuit in all but attachment to science. Professor Bateson summed up his belief in the text which he placed on the title-page of his first great work on Variation: the text which proclaims that there is a flesh of men, another of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes.
Darwin remained to the end of his life undecided between the two views, for he allowed his original statement as to life having been breathed into one or more forms by the Creator, to pass from edition to edition of the Origin of Species. If the polyphyletic theory be adopted, it must be said that the position of the materialist is made far more difficult than it is at present. Let us see what it means. On the materialistic hypothesis, and the same may be said of the pantheistic or any other hypothesis not theistic in nature, a certain cell came by chance to acquire the attributes of life. From this descended plants and animals of all kinds in divergent series till the edifice was crowned by man. I have elsewhere endeavoured to point out all that is involved in this assumption, which, it must be confessed, is a very large mouthful to swallow.
Let us now consider what the polyphyletic hypothesis involves. According to this view one cell accidentally developed the attributes of vegetable life; a further accident leads another cell to initiate the line of invertebrates; another that of fishes, let us say; another of mammals: the number varying according to the views of the theorist on phylogeny. Let us not forget that the cell or cells which accidentally acquired the attributes of life, had accidentally to shape themselves from dead materials into something of a character wholly unknown in the inorganic world. If one seriously considers the matter it is—so it seems to me—utterly impossible to subscribe to the accidental theory of which the immanent god—the blind god of Bergson—is a mere variant. One must agree with the late Lord Kelvin that "science positively affirms creative power ... which (she) compels us to accept as an article of belief." But what are we to say with regard to the series of repeated accidents which the polyphyletic hypothesis would seem to demand? Is it really possible that any man could bring himself to place credence in such a marvellous series of occurrences? Monophyletic or polyphyletic evolution, whichever, if either, it may have been, presents no difficulty on the creation hypothesis.
The Divine plan might have embraced either method. It is not merely revelation but ordinary reason which shows us that the wonderful things which we know, not to speak of the far more wonderful things at which we can only guess, cannot possibly be explained on any other hypothesis than that of a Free First Cause—a Creator.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 35: The Theory of Evolution. By William Berryman Scott. New York: The Macmillan Co.]
VIII. CATHOLIC WRITERS AND SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
The names of great Catholic men of science, laymen like Pasteur and Mueller, or ecclesiastics like Stensen and Mendel, are familiar to all educated persons. But even educated persons, or at least a great majority of them, are quite ignorant of the goodly band of workers in science who were devout children of the Church. Nothing perhaps more fully exemplifies this than the history of the controversy respecting the subject whose name is set down as the title of this paper. For centuries a controversy raged at intervals around the question of spontaneous generation. Did living things originate, not merely in the past but every day, from non-living matter? When we consider such things as the once mysterious appearance of maggots in meat it is not wonderful that in the days before the microscope the answer was in the affirmative.
To-day the question may be considered almost closed. True, the negative proposition cannot be proved, hence it is impossible to say that spontaneous generation does not take place. However, the scientific world is at one in the belief that so far all attempts to prove it have failed utterly.
St. Thomas Aquinas had a celebrated and sometimes misunderstood controversy with Avicenna, a very famous Arabian philosopher. It was a philosophical, but not strictly scientific, controversy, for both persons accepted or assumed the existence of spontaneous generation. Avicenna claimed that it took place by the powers of Nature alone, whilst St. Thomas adopted the attitude which we should adopt to-day, were spontaneous generation shown to be a fact, namely, that if Nature possessed this power, it was because the Creator had willed it so.
We come to close quarters with the question itself in 1668, when Francesco Redi (1626-1697) published his book on the generation of insects and showed that meat protected from flies by wire gauze or parchment did not develop maggots, whilst meat left unprotected did. From this and from other experiments he was led to formulate the theory that in all cases of apparent production of life from dead matter the real explanation was that living germs from outside had been introduced into it. For a long time this view held the field. Redi was, as his name indicates, an Italian, an inhabitant of Aretino, a poet as well as a physician and scientific worker. He was physician to two of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany and an academician of the celebrated Accademia della Crusca. Those works which I have been able to consult on the subject say nothing about his religion, but there can scarcely be any doubt that he was a Catholic. At any rate there is no doubt whatever as to the other persons now to be mentioned in connection with the controversy, which again became active about a century after Redi had published his book. The antagonists on this occasion were both of them Catholic priests, and both of them deserve some brief notice.
John Turberville Needham (1713-1781) was born in London and belonged on both sides to old Catholic families. He was educated at Douay and ordained priest at Cambray in 1738. After teaching in that place for some time he journeyed to England and became head-master of the once celebrated school for Catholic boys at Twyford, near Winchester. From there he went for a short time to Lisbon as professor of philosophy in the English College. Subsequently he travelled with various Peers making "the grand tour." After that he retired to Paris, where he was elected a member of the Academie des Sciences. He was the first director of the Imperial Academy in Brussels; a canon, first of Dendermonde and afterward of Soignies. He died in Brussels and was buried in the Abbey of Condenberg. Needham was a man of really great scientific attainments, and perhaps nothing proves the estimation in which he was held more than the fact that in 1746 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, being the first Catholic priest to become a member of that distinguished body. When one remembers the attitude at that time, and much later, of Englishmen towards Catholics it is clear that Needham's claims to distinction must have been more than ordinarily great. His clear, firm signature is still to be seen in the charter-book of the society, and it is interesting to note that he signs his name "Turberville Needham." Needham did not confine his attention to science, for he was an ardent antiquary, and in 1761 was elected a Fellow of that other ancient and exclusive body, the Society of Antiquaries of London. In this connection it may be mentioned that Needham published, in 1761, a book which caused a great sensation, for he endeavoured to show that he could translate an Egyptian inscription by means of Chinese characters; in other words, that the forms of writing were germane to one another. He was shown to be quite wrong by some of the learned Jesuits of the day, who, with the assistance of Chinese men of letters, proved that the resemblances to which Needham had called attention were merely superficial.
But our interest now is in his controversy with Spallanzani. Lazaro Spallanzani (1729-1799) was born at Scandiano in Modena and educated at the Jesuit College at Reggio di Modena. There was some question as to his entering the Society; he did not do so, however, but repaired to the University of Bologna, where his kinswoman, Laura Bassi, was then professor of physics. He became a priest, but devoted his life to teaching and experimenting. He must have been something of what we in Ireland used to call a "polymath," for he professed at one time or another, in various universities, logic, metaphysics, Greek, and finally natural history. He first explained the physics of what children call "ducks and drakes" made by flat pebbles on water; laid the foundations of meteorology and vulcanology, and is perhaps best of all known in connection with what is termed "regeneration" in the earthworm and above all in the salamander. His experiments still hold the field in a region of study which has vastly extended itself in recent years, becoming of prime importance in the vitalistic controversy.
In the dispute, however, with which we are concerned Needham and Spallanzani defended opposite positions. The former, as the result of his observations, asserted that, in spite of the boiling and sealing up of organic fluids, life did appear in them. His opponent claimed that Needham's experiments had not been sufficiently precise. The latter had enclosed his fluids in bottles fitted with ordinary corks, covered with mastic varnish, whilst Spallanzani, employing flasks with long necks which he could and did seal by heat when the contents were boiling, showed that in that case no life was produced. He declared, and correctly too, as we now know, that Needham's methods did permit of the introduction of something from without. The controversy went to sleep again until the discovery of oxygen by Priestley in 1774. When it had been shown that oxygen was essential to the existence of all forms of life, the question arose as to whether the boiling of the organic fluids in the earlier experiments had not expelled all the oxygen and thus prevented the existence and development of any life.
In the further experiments which this query gave rise to, we meet with another illustrious Catholic name, that of Theodor Schwann, better known as the originator of that fundamental piece of scientific knowledge, the cell-theory. Theodor Schwann (1810-1882) was born at Neuss and educated by the Jesuits, first at Cologne, afterward at Bonn. After studying at the Universities of Wuerzburg and Berlin he became professor in the Catholic University of Louvain, where his name was one of the principal glories of this now wrecked seat of learning. Thence he went as professor to Liege, where he died. He was, says his biography in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "of a peculiarly gentle and amiable character and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life." Schwann's experiments tended to show that the introduction of air—of course containing oxygen—did not lead to the production of life, if the air had first been thoroughly sterilised. It was thought that this question had been finally answered, when it was reopened by Pouchet, in 1859. He was a Frenchman, the director of the Natural History Museum of Rouen, but as to his religious views I have no information. It is quite probable, however, that he was a Catholic. Pouchet and all on his side were finally—so far as there can be finality in such a matter—disposed of by Pasteur, of whose distinction as a man of science and devoutness as a Catholic nothing need be said.
It is quite unnecessary to devote any consideration here to the character of Pasteur's experiments, for they have become a matter of common knowledge to all educated persons. Let it suffice to say that they were on the lines first laid down by Redi and greatly elaborated by Spallanzani, namely the exclusion from the fluids or other substances under examination of all possible contamination by minute organisms in the air. Spallanzani knew nothing of these organisms; they were not discovered until many years after his death. But he surmised that there was something which brought corruption into the fluids; he excluded that something, with the result that the fluids remained untainted. From our point of view, however, there are several things to be learnt. In the first place quite a number of ignorant persons have thought that the discovery of spontaneous generation would upset religious dogmata. That of course is quite absurd. From what has been said above it will be seen that St. Thomas Aquinas—in common with all the men of learning of his day—fully believed in it, as did Needham, another ecclesiastic as to whose orthodoxy there is no doubt. Further, the entire controversy is a complete confutation of the false allegation that between Catholicism and science there is a great gulf set. There have been few longer and more remarkable controversies in the history of science, and scarce any other—if indeed any other—which has such important bearings upon health and industry than that which relates to bio- or abio-genesis. It is significant to find that the names of so many of the protagonists in this controversy were those of men who were also convinced adherents of the Catholic Church.
IX. A THEORY OF LIFE[36]
Of the making of books on the question of Vitalism there would seem to be no end; and, following upon quite a number of others comes this handsome, well-illustrated, intensely interesting book, by one whose writings are always worth study. It purports to deal with the Origin and Evolution of Life; but, as to the first, it leaves us in no way advanced towards any real explanation of that problem on materialistic lines. As to the second, though there is a vast amount of valuable information, often illuminating and suggestive, again we confess that we fail to discover any real philosophy of that process of evolution which the author postulates. These propositions we must now proceed to justify. We can consider them from the most rigidly scientific standpoint, since, if every word or almost every word in the book were proved truth, it would not make the slightest difference to Catholic Philosophy, nor, indeed, to Theistic teachings, since in the imperishable words of Paley: "There may be many second causes, and many courses of second causes, one behind another, between what we observe of nature and the Deity; but there must be intelligence somewhere; there must be more in nature than what we see; and, amongst the things unseen, there must be an intelligent designing Author."
The scientific writer has to remember that whilst he may explain many things, his work is a torso unless and until he has either accepted the Creator as the first Cause, which he is too often disinclined to do, or has supplied an equally satisfactory explanation, which he is permanently unable to do. On the other hand, at least some defenders of Theism in the past might well have borne in mind that, whilst we are assured of the fact of Creation, we know absolutely nothing of its mechanism save that it came about by the command of God. There is nothing in which clear thinking and clear writing are more necessary than in discussions of this kind; and too many of them are vitiated by an obvious lack of philosophical training on the part of the participants. Even in this carefully written book there are instances of this kind of thing to which we must allude before considering its main arguments.
"We know, for example, that there has existed a more or less complete chain of beings from monad to man, that the one-toed horse had a four-toed ancestor, that man has descended from an unknown ape-like form somewhere in the Tertiary." "We know"—that is exactly the opposite of the truth. We know a thing when it is susceptible of proof according to the rigid rules of formal logic; when, to doubt it, would be to give rise to a suspicion as to our sanity; then we know a thing, but not until then. Now, as to the sentence quoted, we may allow the first part to pass unchallenged with some possible demur at the use of the word "chain." The second so-called piece of knowledge was doubted by no less an authority than the late Adam Sedgwick. The third assertion plainly and distinctly is not the case; for Science knows nothing whatsoever about the origin of man's body. In 1901 Branco, a distinguished palaeontologist, with no Theistic leanings as far as we know, told the world that man appears on our planet as "a genuine homo novus," and that palaeontology "knows no ancestors of man." Nor has any discovery since that date necessitated the modification of that opinion. What the writer means by saying "We know" is "I am convinced"; but, with the deepest respect for his undoubted position, the two things are not quite identical. "Biology, like theology, has its dogmas. Leaders have their disciples and blind followers." Wise words! They are those of the author with whom we are dealing. To say "we know" when really we only surmise is a misuse of language, just as it is also a misuse to ask the question "Does nature make a departure from its previously ordered procedure and substitute chance for law?" since the ordinary reader is all too apt to forget that "Nature" is a mere abstraction, and that to speak of Nature doing such or such a thing helps us in no way along the road towards an explanation of things.
Or again: "So far as the creative power of energy is concerned, we are on sure ground." The author has a careful note on the word creation (p. 5), "the production of something new out of nothing," under which definition it is abundantly clear that energy, whilst it may be productive, cannot be creative. In fact, nothing can be creative in any definite and rigid sense, save a Creator Who existed from all eternity and from Whom all things arose. One more instance of loose argumentation, and we can turn to the main purport of the book. It is a link in the author's "chain" which cannot be passed without examination. Everybody is familiar with the method of proof by elimination. We set down every possible explanation of a certain occurrence; we rule out one after the other until but one is left. If we really have set down all the possible explanations, and if we are quite clear as to the fact that all those which have been excluded are legitimately put out of court, then the one remaining explanation must be the true one. It is a method of proof which has frequently been applied to the vitalistic problem, and with the greatest effect, as it is admitted by some of those who would greatly like to find a materialistic explanation for that problem (cf. The Philosophy of Biology, Johnstone, p. 319).
Let us see how our author employs it. What, he asks, is "the internal moving principle" in living substance? And he replies: "We may first exclude the possibility that it acts either through supernatural or teleological interposition through an externally creative power." Very well! Philosophers tell us that we can assume any position we choose for the purposes of our argument, but that ultimately we must prove that assumption or admit ourselves beaten. We look anxiously for the proof of the assumption made by our author, but absolutely no attempt is made to give one. We must be pardoned, therefore, if we hesitate to accept such an important statement on his mere ipse dixit. We pass on to the next elimination: "Although its visible results are in a high degree purposeful, we may also exclude as unscientific the vitalistic theory of an entelechy[37] or any other form of internal perfecting agency distinct from known or unknown physio-chemical energies." Why "unscientific"? Numbers of high authorities have not thought it so; and in quite recent years such eminent writers as Driesch and McDougal have written erudite works to prove this "unscientific" hypothesis. Is there any proof brought forward for this assertion and its corresponding elimination?
Let us continue the quotation: "Since certain forms of adaptation which were formerly mysterious can now be explained without the assumption of an entelechy we are encouraged to hope that all forms may be thus explained." The author does not tell us what the mysterious adaptations are, nor does he offer us the explanations which, in his opinion, explain them. We cannot, therefore, criticise his views, and can only remind his readers that, because an explanation plausibly explains an occurrence, it is by no means always therefore certain to be the true explanation; it may, indeed, be wholly false.
Further, those who have been wandering for the past half-century in the fields of science have become a little wearied of "explanations," vaunted, for periods of five or ten years, as the key to open all locks, and then cast into the furnace. What the author would seem to mean by his statement is this: "I am convinced myself that we can do without a 'supernatural' explanation, and I regard as 'unscientific' any explanation which cannot be put to the test of chemistry and physics; hence I must shut the door on anything like an entelechy, and, that being so, it behoves me to look for some other explanation." Of course, we are putting these words into the mouth of our author; if we were dealing with the matter ourselves we should be inclined to argue that, by the eliminatory method, chemistry and physics do prove, or do help to prove, the existence of an entelechy.
With these expostulations we may turn to the writer's pronouncements on the vitalistic question which seem to us to be worthy of serious consideration. Everybody knows that there are two very diverse opinions on this topic; the one that there is, the other that there is not something more—a plus—in living than there is in not-living objects. In other words, that there is a difference of kind, and not merely of degree, between a stone and a sparrow. Hence the schools of thought called vitalistic and mechanistic. To most persons it has up to now seemed impossible that there could be a third school; we appeared to be confronted with what the logicians call a Dichotomy. Professor Osborn seems to us to think otherwise, though he is not wholly clear on this matter. If we are to "reject the vitalistic hypotheses of the ancient Greeks, and the modern vitalism of Driesch, of Bergson, and of others," and if, on the other hand, we are to view, as he thinks we must, the cosmos as one of "limitless and ordered energy"—we have emphasised the word "ordered" for reasons which will shortly appear—we must clearly look out for some middle way. "Ordered," a purely mechanistic and materialistically realised cosmos cannot be. "Ordered" conditions are determined by what we agree to call "Laws"; and these, as all must admit, entail a Lawgiver.
The alternative is Blind Chance; and the author, after considering the question, agrees, as again most reasonable persons will agree, that Blind Chance is no explanation of things as they are. He quotes a modern chemist who, discussing the probability of the environmental fitness of the earth for life being a mere chance process, remarks: "There is, in truth, not one chance in countless millions of millions that the many unique properties of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and especially of their stable compounds, water and carbonic acid, which chiefly make up the atmosphere of a new planet, should simultaneously occur in the three elements otherwise than through the operation of a natural law which somehow connects them together. There is no greater probability that these unique properties should be without due cause uniquely favourable to the organic mechanism" (J. J. Henderson, 1913).
If neither of the classic points of view is tenable, what then is the explanation, if, indeed, any be possible? The author casts one brief glance down that blind-alley marked "Element Way." Does some known element or some unknown element, to which the name Bion might be given, exist and form the source of the energy in living things? Radium has only been known to us for a few years; can we say that there is no such thing as Bion? Of course we cannot; but this we can say, that, if there is such an element and if it is really responsible for all the protean manifestations of life, wonderful as radium and its doings are, they must sink into nothingness beside those of this new and unsuspected entity. The author evidently does not think that this path is a profitable one to pursue, and we agree with him; so he turns his attention to the question of energy. Energy is the capacity for doing work. It is often, of course, latent, as, for example, in a cordite cartridge, which is a peaceful, harmless thing until the energy stored up in it is realised with the accompanying explosion and work is done. It is the same with a bent spring; a clock-weight when the clock is not going, and so on.
We need not develop this matter further; but one point must be alluded to, namely, the gradual exhaustion of the available energy in the changes from one manifestation to another. In all physical processes heat is evolved, which heat is distributed by conduction and radiation and tends to become universally diffused throughout space. When complete uniformity has been attained, all physical phenomena will come to an end; in other words, our solar system must come to an end, and it must have had a beginning. It is a well-known argument. Is there anything to rewind the clock which is running down before our very eyes? It was once urged that stellar collisions, and such-like things, might permit us to postulate a cyclical arrangement (and thus rearrangement) of universal phenomena; but that hypothesis does not seem to find any supporters to-day.
In his interesting book, already mentioned, Dr. Johnstone called attention to the power possessed by living matter of reversing the process; but no reversal of this kind and extent can make up for the constant degradation of energy which is taking place all round us. We mention this because it shows that "energy" cannot, in any case, afford an eternal solution, but only a temporal and therefore a limited one. No one doubts that there is energy in the living thing, nor that there are what the author calls "complexes of energies." No one, again, will quarrel with the statement that energy is first seen in the sun, in the earth, in the air, and in the water; that "with life something new appears in the universe, namely, a union of the internal and external adjustment of energy which we appropriately call an Organism." That "the germ is an energy complex" is no doubt an unproved hypothesis, as he admits, but is quite likely. With all these assertions we may agree, though we cannot with that which follows, namely, that energy is creative, for that such is impossible in any true sense of that word we have already tried to show.
We have now to ask ourselves in what way this energy conception of life differs from, or goes beyond, the two theories of life—mechanistic and vitalistic, which have hitherto been supposed to have exhausted the possibilities of explanation. In order to do this we must analyse the author's idea of energy and its relationship to biological processes a little more closely. He begins his study of life and its evolution by considering how nutrition and the derivation of energy can have taken place before chlorophyl had come into existence; and he very pertinently points to the prototrophic bacteria as probably representing "the survival of a primordial stage of life chemistry." Thus a "primitive feeder," the bacterium Nitrosomonas, "for combustion ... takes in oxygen directly through the intermediate action of iron, phosphorus or manganese, each of the single cells being a powerful little chemical laboratory which contains oxidising catalysers, the activity of which is accelerated by the presence of iron and manganese. Still, in the primordial stage, Nitrosomonas lives on ammonium sulphate, taking its energy (food) from the nitrogen of ammonium and forming nitrates. Living symbiotically with it is Nitrobacter, which takes its energy (food) from the nitrates formed by Nitrosomonas, oxidising them into nitrates. Thus these two species illustrate in its simplest form our law of the interaction of an organism (Nitrobacter) with its life environment (Nitrosomonas)" (p. 82, author's italics).
Once one has got to this stage, it is ex hypothesi easy to ascend through the vegetable and animal worlds and to formulate the various laws which appear to have shaped the evolution of life and of species. We are then "within the system," but to arrive at anything worthy of the name of an explanation we have first to get within the system. Even then there remains over the task of explaining how the system comes to be there to get inside of. The writer talks of his example as "the simplest form." Yet, in his own words, it is a "powerful little chemical laboratory," well stocked with catalysers and other potent means for carrying on its work. "Simple"! Well, no doubt comparatively simple, but in reality complex almost beyond the power of words to describe. "A chemical laboratory"! Yes; and one which performs most delicate operations. "Well stocked with catalysers"! And what are they? Most wonderful things which induce change without themselves undergoing any; discoveries of quite recent date as to which we still know but little. "Simple" seems hardly the word to apply, save in strict relation to other and higher forms. How did this laboratory come into existence? In what way did it learn to do its work? How did catalysers come to be? Was all this mere chance-medley? It is Paley's example of the watch found on the heath once more. Does it help us in any way to talk about "energy" and "complexes" of energy and "the creative force of energy"? To us it does not seem to advance matters one little bit. Either these operations of Nitrosomonas are determined or they are not; either they are the result of a law or they are the result of blind chance; in either case the energy which is involved must act according to the conditions ordered or not ordered. In other words: if it is the dominant factor, as the writer would lead us to suppose; if there is "direction," then the action of energy must be directive; and, if it is directive, in what possible way does it differ, save in name, from the old entelechy or vital principle, or whatever else one may choose to call it? On the other hand, if there is no such a thing as direction, if everything happens by chance, if the mechanistic theory is right, how does energy save us from complete surrender to that theory?
From all this it would appear that whilst energy is constantly being exhibited (and in all sorts of manifestations) by the living object, that does not explain anything, since it does not explain how energy originally came to be, nor how it came to work under the laws which seem to govern it. It is one more added to the long list of "explanations," which hopelessly break down because those who have put them forward have never apparently applied themselves to the task of grasping the important difference between a final and an intermediate cause.
Let us sum up this part of our author's teaching in the light of this distinction. The organism is a material complex, and all sorts of actions and reactions take place in it. They are subject to the laws of physics, and notably to those relating to energy and its transformations. It has internal energies which must be adjusted to one another and not less to those around it; that is to say, it must be more or less in harmony with its environment. There are the problems of germ-plasm, and its transmission; the effect on it, if any, of the body, and the reaction of the body to its environment. There are also the catalysers of which we have spoken, with many problems associated with them, and throwing a possible and unexpected light on the vexed question of Vitalism and the Conservation of Energy. There are all these things, manifestations of energy; there is the watch, and it is going. But, as we remarked elsewhere, the fact that we have learned that the resiliency of the spring in the watch makes it "go" does not exhaust the explanation of the watch any more than the fact that we know something of the actions and reactions of energy in the organism exhausts its explanation. The watch is "going"; so is the organism. Each of them, in a sense, is a "wonderful little laboratory" in which manifestations of energy are constantly taking place. The watchmaker constructed the watch for that purpose; who or what constructed the organism? Darwin and the Darwinians would have said—Natural Selection. In fact, Darwin rather lamented that "the old argument from design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails now that the law of Natural Selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of Natural Selection, than in the course which the wind blows." There again Darwin fell into a mistake, because he confused an intermediate with a final cause. Even if Natural Selection were all that the most ultra-Darwinian could claim it to be, it could not, as Driesch and others have shown, exhaust the explanation of the organism.
As a matter of fact the world of science is very far from thinking of Natural Selection as anything more than a factor, perhaps even a minor factor, in evolution. The author of the work with which we are dealing tells us that "Darwin's law of selection as a natural explanation of the origin of all fitness in form and function has lost its prestige at the present time, and all of Darwinism which now meets with universal acceptance is the law of the survival of the fittest, a limited application of Darwin's great idea as expressed by Herbert Spencer." But let that pass. In another place the author makes it clear that the explanations of to-day, including his own, do not exhaust the subject, for he says "it is incumbent on us to discover the cause of the orderly origin of every character. The nature of such a law we cannot even dream of at present, for the causes of the majority of vertebrate adaptations remain wholly unknown." In any case we must account for Natural Selection; for if it is a Law—as some doubt—it must have had a Lawgiver. The watch must have been an Idea in some one's mind before it became an accomplished fact, and Natural Selection or any other "Law of Nature" must—unless all reason is nonsense and all nonsense reason—also have been an Idea before it became a factor. Whose Idea? Our author does not help us to answer this question. On the contrary—he tries to set an unclimbable fence in the way of any answer by telling us, though without any convincing argument to support his statement, that we may "exclude the possibility that it" [the internal moving principle] "acts either through supernatural or teleological interposition through an externally creative power." But though he refuses to allow us to look in this direction for a solution of our difficulties, it must be confessed that he does not help us with any other answer satisfying the question of the origin and evolution of Life.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 36: The Origin and Evolution of Life; or, the Theory of Action, Reaction, and Interaction of Energy. By F. H. Osborn. (G. Bell & Sons.)]
[Footnote 37: By entelechy—an Aristotelian term re-introduced by Driesch—is meant an agency other than one of a purely chemico-physical character, which differentiates living from not-living substance, and is responsible for the phenomenon of life.]
* * * * *
INDEX OF NAMES
Agassiz, 142
Allen, Grant, 85
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 60, 147, 153
Austen, Miss, 32
Avicenna, 153
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 116
Bassi, Laura, 155
Bateson, W., F.R.S., 4, 7, 11, 118, 150
Bax, Belfort, 37
Benson, Mgr., 84, 88, 94, 101
Bergson, 151, 166
Bernhardi, 20
Borden, Sir Robert, 122
Branco, 162
Buffon, 100
Butler, Samuel 44, 61
Chesterton, G. K., 113
Clodd, E., 86
Conklyn, 23
Cowper, 37
Crichton-Browne, 20
Cuvier, 142
Darwin, 116, 131, 150, 173
Devas, Mr. 27, 120
Dewar, Prof. Sir J., F.R.S., 113
Doyle, Sir A. C., 46, 51
Driesch, 4, 7, 24, 69, 164, 166, 173
Fallopius, 96, 144
Fielding, 31
Gosse, E., 39
Gosse, Philip, 98
Grant Allen, 85
Healy, Father—Tale of, 40
Henderson, J. J., 167
Henslow, 24
Hull, Fr. E., S.J., 103
Huxley, 74, 98, 101, 117
Johnson, Dr. 48, 161, 168
Joly, Prof., F.R.S., 110
Kelvin, Lord, 151
Lankester, 15
Lauder, Harry, 2
Leduc, 2, 62
Lodge, Sir O., 3, 85
Loeb, J,. 58, 62
Lucas, E. V., on the War, 47
Mcdougal, 164
Mahaffy, Sir John, 111
Marett, 15, 16
Masefield, 48
Mendel, 75, 135
Milton, 145
Mivart, Prof., 96
Needham, John Turberville, 154
Newman, 33, 38
Newton, The Rev. J., 38
Nietzsche, 19
Osborne, Prof., 160
Paley, 160
Pasteur, 157
Perkin, Prof. W. H., 107
Pouchet, 157
Priestley, 156
Redi, Francisco, 153
Richardson, 31
Rignano, 25, 62
Ryder, Dr., 51
Sabatier, 113
Schwann, Theodor, 157
Scott, Prof., 142
Scott, The Rev. Thomas, 38
Sedgwick, Adam, 162
Spallanzani, Lazaro, 155
Stensen, Nicolaus, 75, 97, 99
Tilden, Sir William, 64
Tyson, Edward, 77
Wasmann, 26, 150
Wells, H. G., 49
Whiffen, 20
GENERAL INDEX
Adam, 146
Adrenals, 63
"After-Christians," 120
Aggressive mimicry, 123
Albino race, An, 128
Amazonian Indians, 20
"Anatomie of a Pygmie," 77
Ancestral peculiarities, 133
Aniline dyes, 107
Arrangement, 8, 137
Bacteria, Prototrophic, 169
Badische Aniline Fabrik, 106, 109
Bathybius, 98
Bion, 167
Blind Chance, 166
Bondage of Knowledge, The, 84
Botanic Garden, 131
Breeding Committees, 119
Breeding True, 126
Bricks and Builders, 139
"Bugbear of Hell," 21, 119
Calvinism, 32
Cartesian idea of the soul, 69
Catalysts, 113, 170
Celibacy, 120
Cell-Theory, The, 157
Chance-Medley, 134
Chromatin, 130
Colloids, 62
"Continuity," 46
Conversion, 34
Cowardice, Alleged, of Catholic Scientists, 99
Creation, 163; a method of, 144
"Criticisms on the Pentateuch," 45
"Cutting up of Frogs," 115
Cytolysis, 65
"Dabney, Mr.," 47
Defence of the Realm Act, 82
Degradation of Energy, 168
Derivative Creation, 146
Discontinuity, 3
"Ducks and Drakes," 156
Duck's Egg, 125, 130
Dye-stuffs, 107
Elimination, Proof by, 163
Energy, 16
Energy, Degradation of, 169
Entelechy, 164, 171
Eskimo, 19
"Esmond," 31
"Essays and Reviews," 45
Eugenics, 117
Evangelicanism, 32, 33, 44
Exhibitions, International, of 1851 and 1862, 10
Extermination of the Less Fit, 122
Families, Restricted, 118
"Father and Son," 39
"Force and Energy, a Theory of Dynamics," 85
"Force of Truth, The," 38
Formaldehyde, 2
Fossils, Explanation of, 97
Free First Cause, 144, 151
Freethinkers and "tolerance, justice, and gentleness," 73
Germination, 65
Guide, the Church a, 92
Hapsburg lip, The, 127
Harmonious-Equipotential System, 69
Heredity in the Law Courts, 29
Hormones, 63
Horse, Pedigree of the, 161
Imprimatur, The, 77
In-and-in breeding, 127
Index Prohibitorius, 95
Industrial Scientific Research, Department of, 114
Inheritance: Chemical theory, 134; Mnemic theory, 5, 61, 133; Particulate theories, 61, 132
Jack, Jill, and Joan, 119
Jungle, The law of, 122
King-crabs, 145
Lamp-shells, 145
Law and Heredity, The, 129
Law and Lawgiver, 9
Law of Nature, 174
Law's "Serious Call," 31
Liberty, personal, 87
"Life and Habit," 61
Life, Origin of, 160
"Little Dorrit," 112
"Loss and Gain," 33
Maggots in meat, 153
Man's pedigree, 161
"Marriage," 49
Mauve, 107
Mediate Creation, 147
Memory, unconscious, 5
Mendelism, 6
Method of Creation, 144, 161
Micromeristic theories, 5
Mimicry, 123
Mnemic Theory of Inheritance, The, 5, 61, 133
Monastic Orders, 121
Monophyletic evolution, 151
"Multitude and Solitude," 48
"Naturalism and Agnosticism," 57
Natural Selection, 19, 122, 173
"Nature does this," 136, 162
Nature's insurgent son, 15
"New Republic, The," 56
"New Revelation, The," 46, 51
Nitrobacter, 170
Novels and Novelists, 30
"Occam's" razor, 29
Occultism, 28, 51
Ordered energy, 166
"Organism as a whole," 38
Origin of Species, 150
"Over Bemertons," 47
Oxford Movement, 33
"Pamela," 32
Pangenesis, 61, 131
Pantheism, 9
"Paradise Lost," 145
"Parson Adams," 31
Particulate Theories of Inheritance, 61, 132
Personal Liberty, 81
"Philosophy of Biology, The," 163
Phylogeny, 4, 149
Plymouth Brethren, 99
Political leaders of the day, 114
Polyphyletic hypothesis, The, 150
Porto Santo rabbits, 148
Post-Christians, 27
Prototrophic bacteria, 169
Providentissimus Deus, 103
Pugs and Greyhounds, 126
Purposefulness: a strange confession as to, 59
"Raymond," 51
Resiliency, 172
Restricted families, 118
Sabbatarianism, 36
Salaries of Scientific Teachers, 112
Saurians, 145
Science, Catholic Men of, 75-6
Science, Neglect of, at Schools, 109
Sin, Mythical Ideas of, 123
Six-fingered race, A, 128
Slavery in the State, 24
"Slime of the Earth," 146
"Social Vermin," 118
"Some Revelations as to 'Raymond,'" 53
Special Creation, 142
Spermatozoon, 65
Spiritualism and the War, 50
Spontaneous Generation, 152
Springs in the watch, The, 172
"Stinks Men," 110
Survival of the Fittest, 122
Syngamy, 65
Synthetic drugs, 107
Telepathy, 2
Teratomata, 65
Theophobia, 26
Thermos flask, The, 113
"Throws back," 128
Trilobites, 145
Trinity College, Dublin, 110
"Tyranny" of the Church, 91
Uncle Remus and the rabbit's tail, 127
Unconscious Memory, 5, 61
Universities, Mediaeval, 75
Vitalism and Anti-Vitalism, 68, 165
"Way of All Flesh, The," 44
"Wisdom, Book of," 123
Wolff's Experiment, 69
* * * * *
PRINTED BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have been fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below:
page 85
years in investigating. The man who sets out to make a research, without first acertaining[ascertaining] what others have done in that direction, proposes to
page 121 (Footnote 32)
Conklyn, Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men. Princetown[Princeton] University Press, 1915.
page 136
mere personification and means either chance-medley or a Creator, according to the old dilemna.[dilemma] There is a very curious example of this inability
page 153:
We come to close quarters with the question itself in 1668, when Franceso[Francesco] Redi (1626-1697) published his book on the generation of insects
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