Life: Its True Genesis
by Horatius Flaccus · English · Gutenberg #9307 · 504,791 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Life: Its True Genesis
Author: Horatius Flaccus
Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9307]
Most recently updated: August 24, 2014
Language: English
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Life: Its True Genesis
By R. W. Wright
[Masoretic Hebrew.]--אֲׁשֶֽר זַרְעוׄ־בִל עַל־הָאָ֑רֶע׃.--
Οὗ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ χατὰ γένος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. [Septuagint.]
"Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is
upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]
Second Edition
1884
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
TO
ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.
OF CHESHIRE, CONN.
Contents.
Prefatory
Chapter I. Introductory.
Chapter II. Life--Its True Genesis.
Chapter III. Alternations of Forest Growths.
Chapter IV. The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
Chapter V. Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
Chapter VI. Distribution and Permanence of Species.
Chapter VII. What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
Chapter VIII. Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
Chapter IX. Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
Chapter X. Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.
Preface to Second Edition.
Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in
that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that
thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or
spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This
is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of
the tenth verse:
"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not
thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (_the earth_) bring forth
and bud (_not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth_), that it (_the
earth_) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater (_man being the
only sower of seed and eater of bread_): so shall my Word be (_the Word of
Life_) that goeth forth out of my mouth (_the mouth of the Lord_); it
shall not return unto me void (_i.e., lifeless_), but it shall accomplish
that which I (_the Lord Jehovah_) please, and it (_the living Word_) shall
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six
hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,
and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall
come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle
tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that
shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come
and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,
"Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of
nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the
conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence
by the divine fiat.
In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on
this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.
In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of
Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in
history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such
volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a
flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but
on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,
and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as
vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon
as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and
the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.
There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than
in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most
remarkable formula is taken.
We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"
as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"
instead of God, in their philosophical writings.
As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after _Truth_ as it is to be
found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the temple of
science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful consideration. It is
only when they become dogmatic, and assert propositions that have no
foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe, that we propose to break a
lance at their expense, and lay bare their fallacies. We claim nothing
more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than we are willing and ready to
accord to them. Indeed, we would champion their right to be heard sooner
than we would our own, on the principle that it is our duty to be just to
others before we are generous to ourselves, or those of our own following.
But our Agnostic friends should remember that when they charge us with
being "dogmatic in science," the charge should be made good from a
scientific stand-point, and not merely by the bandying of words.
When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million
years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,
we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist
for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they
have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where
they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends
referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.
Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from
the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these
toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all
life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life
ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of
nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other
forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live
without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform
to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and
food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a
dead batrachian inside of one year.
This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality
between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science
finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this
riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim
there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let
the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth
these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon
any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.
The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike
Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,
and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest
boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large
force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the
characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,
sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by
the road-sides, and the _débris_ scraped into the centre of the road-beds;
the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside
rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break
the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones
etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in
length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that
they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no
trace of a mother toad in connection with them.
The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.
What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.
It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion
of the town.
The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source
of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout
in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn
he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that
expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and
on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his
enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,
not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the
blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing
out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common _Rana_
family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in
similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the
reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been
apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.
Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet
into the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water
secured. We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as
well as at some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they
wanted, remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog,
originating therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would
make his way to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well
enough as one of the _Rana_ family. It was only to our more intelligent
neighbors (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we
stopped to explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it
appears, whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are
equally conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water
from our cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm
sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting.
The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing
their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young
wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the
open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch
out into mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest
study, as well as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the
proper time they come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable
modification in their structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the
tormenting little insects that they are during the summer and autumn
months in our Northern climate. The object of the covered barrel was to
ascertain whether we could reach the conditions favorable for the
development of this little pest of the _Culex_ family, independently of
the eggs of the insect itself. This required some patience and not a
little care. We knew that an egg dropped through the interstices of the
netting would sink to the bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as
every scientist understanding the process well knows. It must be floated
on the water at first, or until it reaches the point of development into
a wiggler. The first step in the process of its life is as cunningly
devised as the second, and the second as the third, until the
full-fledged mosquito is reached.
All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the
experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our
demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the
covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of
harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the
water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of
their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable
world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and
we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by
Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished
in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an
acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of
the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a
convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than
ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he
may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,
for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this
question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy
now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.
Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show
that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we
have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our
mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from
little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and
knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk
about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"
especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain
knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned
Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with
the same becoming courtesy.
In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled
"Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a
more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.
Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any
other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in
the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so
conspicuously in the historic page.
When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young
frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was
operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with
us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these
batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our
highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose
that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the
earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all
vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did
in the beginning.
One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that
scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms
have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence
diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific
centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the
environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like
living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and
thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as
their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in
pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict
went forth.
As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of
life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India
Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural
_habitat_ of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that
the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the
extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is
manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the
common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller
mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish,
as we have said, a natural _habitat_ for the oyster, and as the salt
sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long
thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without
the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped
along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will
be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and
not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any,
locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale
the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters
from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that
these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing
conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes
its appearance.
There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a
dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt
of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that
acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of
out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May
and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those
months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is
specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.
Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the
University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished
for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent
as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to
the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in
the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications
in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier
periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend
strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical
text; as, for instance, the _Trilobites_, occurring so abundantly in what
is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance,
whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil,
characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much
in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the
presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of
the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of
these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: "It took long
enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked
the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest
scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.
All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been
governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "_similia
similibus gignuntur_"--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains
universally. The _Graptolites_, occurring in the bituminous shales of the
Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to
which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of
natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the
fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible
teaches us.
When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of
minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the
Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible
rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a
great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the
induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,
he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun
several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will
be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True
Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.
When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less
than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally
true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had
spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our
command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation
of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and
study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as
every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense
amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his
paper on the _Archæopterix_, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a
case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing
a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was
trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every
one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.
It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if
not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we
have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for
the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological
strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings
upon the Matterhorn!
Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says
be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in
the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power
of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at
least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to
themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power
that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and
the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other
mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the
"Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of
the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that
period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in
physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were
expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our
materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,
and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it
took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data
we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in
which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at
least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or
defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?
Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted
English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and
pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When
Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering
Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the
other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the
twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent
events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to
place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"
unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,
is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it
appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.
When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,
of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation
of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other
institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both
know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first
command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,
not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles
of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or
power of life in matter.
That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth
their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now
asserts they originally came from.
And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts
thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and
earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis
changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine
energy intervene!
"Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after
our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the
material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is
the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no
word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited
sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander
purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the
light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances
with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this
millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!
In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between
the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge
over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass
it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It
takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him
where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his
higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material
dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.
Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly
Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead
of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.
We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and
conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career
for good or for evil.
We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of
our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so
doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant
at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to _The
National Quarterly Review_, for the captious manner in which it treated us
after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its
two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a
class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and
enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of
criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never
thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put
several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist
had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously
as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had
handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural
science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,
materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare
the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive
adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not
so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other
respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were
content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the
fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the
waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests
of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first
and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive
Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained
by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of
unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism
demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"
was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the
writer's own face.
But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged
in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently
indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to
our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as _The National
Quarterly Review_ speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate
friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.
If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;
if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter
for them to regret, and for us to deplore.
To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our
thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in
what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our
thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:
"Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,
Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow
With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been
All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,
Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain
The long night through, and wake at early dawn
To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"
R. W. Wright.
West Cheshier, Conn., _Oct_. 12, 1883.
Prefatory.
The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the
public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal
introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work
may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of
salutation untouched.
The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has
traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous
and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less
conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: _That the
primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living
things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that
they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and
wherever the necessary environing conditions exist_.
The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in
the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in
the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.
The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of
Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true
Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the
biblical and scientific scholar.
In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show
that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception
named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that
we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more
imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall
into the same lines of incidence in human thought.
Science has long taught that the _absence_ of necessary physiological
conditions results everywhere in the _disappearance_ of vital phenomena;
by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the _presence_ of
these necessary conditions results everywhere in the _appearance_ of vital
phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe, where it
is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak, after
each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many thousand
years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the pine paved
the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the beech. Neither
sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the fittest" have
anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of either. Each
yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal principle of life)
was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the earth, and made its
appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the presence of natural
seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions favored.
And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in
the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak
forests where pine have been cleared away, and _vice versa_, in some parts
of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled. So
with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,
over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last
glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will
find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance
without the possible intervention of natural seeds.
The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the
Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred
years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was
undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third
century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch
roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before
them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time
of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to
the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel
points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now
subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.
According to Irenæus, this Greek version was rendered at the request of
Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian library,
and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and Hellenistic
scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that day,--employed
upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount authority to
our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the highest and most
conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and the "new genesis
of life" we derive therefrom.
Σπέρμα (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost an identical
signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "_germ_ of anything,"
or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives
or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of
"seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no
plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which
seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more
comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of
life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used
it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms
σπερματ´κοὶ γόγοι expressing "the _laws of generation contained in
matter_"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual
connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let
the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
yielding fruit after his kind, _whose germinal principle of life, each in
itself after its kind, is upon the earth_"
We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.
But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
do with the '_odium theologicum_?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both
theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
the Hebrew _Hagiographa_, of what less value is it to science than if it
had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the
inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to
science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.
Herbert Spencer?
Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with
all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no
longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every
operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific
speculation to pry. We know what nature _does_, or may know it by the
proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more
than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at
the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,
science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,
without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down
an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood
tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to
land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth
bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day
as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of
endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It
requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the
oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from
primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal
organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian
gemmule, thousands of years ago.
He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a
thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as
our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified
theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,
rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,
transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,
_molécules organiques_, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated
"life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulæ,
with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen
or twenty years.
Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific
speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true
and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,
motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to
the public. [1]
R. W. Wright.
West Cheshire, Conn.
True Genesis.
Chapter I.
Introductory.
It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and
speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly
tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that
utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical
conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally
prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the
current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal
rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our
more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and
speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations
have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material
substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly
persistent elements in the universe--_Matter_ and _Motion_. Everything
else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or else
essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their
theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the
two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate
conclusions respecting matter.
Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,
and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they
claim, of one and the same force in the universe--_Motion_, With the
exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,
ever active and reactive agency.
Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism
more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes
or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
of molecules.
Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."
And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the
beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, _de
novo_? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly
allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied
to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to
provoke both incredulity and derision.
The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.
But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
only a negative conclusion shall follow.
"Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.
Life is neither matter nor motion,
Therefore: Life is not indestructible.
This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the
distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the
incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that
neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,
thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more
illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say
that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,
without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to
embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either
have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence
to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of
such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be
realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows
that this conscious _ego_--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes
attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the
order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we
are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the
theological conception of a God--the one supreme _Ego_ of the
universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as
apprehensive intelligence, is derived.
We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the
order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are
constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent
inductions:--
1. Cause must exist before effect.
2. Without some vital principle, therefore, preëxisting as a cause, there
can be no life-manifestation.
3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.
4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.
5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as
an effect?
6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself
both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an
incongruent and conflictive judgment.
7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,
whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.
8. Hence Life, either as a preëxisting cause or vital agency, must precede
both animal and vegetal organism.
Again:--
9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that
which is produced by an operating cause.
10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it
as an operating cause.
11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,
must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating
cause before there is any produced effect.
12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.
13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some
equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.
And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there
be can no matter without an existing _ego_, in some state of consciousness
in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[2] On what,
therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion,
except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as
we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that
"breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living
soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality.
All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a
rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once
defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The
"materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant
them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since
both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more
potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and
consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without
which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical
existence.
The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is
that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work,
with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital
force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding
God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his
dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his
crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he
resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly
syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon
infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he
successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very
act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as
conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the
world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however,
that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing
demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In
admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually
admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause,
which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the
laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents,
remain as they are.
Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the
disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the _Hagiographa_, or "sacred
writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar
that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially
in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and
inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit
utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that
whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle,
as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates of the
latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and
achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this
statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more
important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found
that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much
neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key that
unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now waging
between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will
most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no
equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published
volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to
be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific
value as in the first chapter of Genesis.
In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful
translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--
1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form
and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not
only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led
Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent
system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally
consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence
"without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by
gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying
inconceivably vast areas in space.
2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important
suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
"gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.
3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.
4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
"guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
this most remarkable genesis.
5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in
which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally
explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature,
either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"
and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible
law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence
in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called,
would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.
Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will
ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."
6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible
theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only
excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the
earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the
necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of
the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena
occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all
mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal
organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and
hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing
(except man) "after his kind."
But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some
of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and
that of materialistic science:--
THE BIBLE GENESIS.
1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an
Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is
no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as _perfect_ of its
kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs,"
declared to be in themselves upon the earth.
3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground,
every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every
plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the
field "before it grew."
4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to
bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth
therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open
firmament of heaven.
5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth
every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in
which they appear in geological distribution.
6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after
he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of
every other living creature.
7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of
life," and he became a "living soul,"
8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of
man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air,
the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the
face of the earth.
9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over
man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.
10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than
the angels."
THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.
1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the
universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and
myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending
through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an
infinite duration of time to come.
2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less
_imperfect_ of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some
underlying law of variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual
development from lower into higher organisms.
3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine
agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all
its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or,
at best, only a sort of _tertium quid_ between matter and motion.
4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles,
birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental
progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and
constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those
of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until
gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.
5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living
creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing
constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower
organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders,
genera, or species.
6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible
respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing
up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms,
until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.
7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as
thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known
moral factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the
social instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree
only, not in kind.
8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and
purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its
adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out
all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly
indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the
tiger, or they dominion over him.
9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those
expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of
God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that
end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has
become endowed.
10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher
than the apes!
And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred
Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and
conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical,
devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at
least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.
But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least
as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which
represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being
implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word
_ZRA_, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis,
from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his "Critica
Sacra," first published in 1662:--"_Sparsit, asparsit, cum aspersione
fudit, diffudit_," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered, universally
diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That the Hebrew
word _ZRA_. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of a plant or
tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree, from which
"seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the earth.
The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that
is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the
"_diversa diversorum viventium primordia_" of Dr. William Harvey, were
originally implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and
biologist, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught
the doctrine expressed in his phrase "_omne vivum ex ovo_," but that of
"primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing
in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its
more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of
receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself
into a living organism.
The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and
vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs
from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or
unit--or whether it originates _de novo_, as the materialists assert, from
infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide
particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring
hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is
certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the
basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that
indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to
be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational
hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical
necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital
effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic
conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or
trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity
rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the
materialistic dogma, _nihil ex nihilo_, would necessitate a like induction
wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues is
manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the
seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are
the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.
The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and
thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its
environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its
environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the
ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only
point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go
back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed
form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no
such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to
the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds
themselves.
At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only,
but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital
forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix,
or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth
itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in
the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less
conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these
"primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or
whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is
everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its
new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the
wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal
point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new
knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital
theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of
a tiger in an Indian jungle.
Teach us to know what nature _does_, not what she _is_; and whatever of
"divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in the majestic
"Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses, in the
"myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic soul
of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired authors
themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted their
inspiration.
We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is
contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great
and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but
because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of
all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.
Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular
machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and,
at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore,
by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we
will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did
the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive
assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to
speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the
molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"
ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave
to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its
proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life
advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this
connection.
The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest
growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
our position, that the Bible Genesis contains _the true key to the mystery
of life_. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be
reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes
of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as
Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial
bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more
perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and
the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the
more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[3] The emphatic
statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the
earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below
"specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement
that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions
favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the
life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.
And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
there is functional activity; while a state, or _status_, is an incidence
determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and
its _status_--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first
instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity
dependent on organization. To assume that this efficient cause is simply
the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is
begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very
important element in the problem--that of conditional environment. What
this efficient cause _is_, is a question that awakens no responsive
inquiry. It strikes its roots too deeply into the intuitions of
consciousness for the soul to give back an intelligible reply. Certain it
is that neither metaphysical speculation, nor scientific inquiry, will
ever enable us to reach the roots of this question, or extract from them
the first quantitive essence of life itself.
We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of
life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in
their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those
founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of
the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real
_animus_ of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the great
central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural, spiritual,
eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand corner-stone of all
religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the
Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of farther India.
Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and most effective
blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely assailed and
overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the more imposing
and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find, in none of the
great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of scientific men, the
slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject worthy of consideration
at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre definitional place in the
dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room
for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as
"the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval
mist," originally pervading the interplanetary spaces.
We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,
Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their
experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the
purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in
the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers
after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of
investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions
against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value
whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting
"life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is
necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion
are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of
facts only, and the latter entirely on _pre_conceived and _pre_judicial
notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no
objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to
the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set
themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular
potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we
must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the
theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is
God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the
heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote
of the universe:--
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as
science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more
household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"
more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less
dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes
for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer
represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating
the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still
industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater
number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this
gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual
controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable
statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as
scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he
has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic
achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.
Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.
When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
no daring mortal could ever pass.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.
The bridge will never be built.
Chapter II.
Life--Its True Genesis.
The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
"correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.
In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[4] For like all living
principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its
primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows
onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no
postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered
correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one
grand comprehensive _Datum_ on which all the objective, as well as
subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved
upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the
"evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that
"upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of
Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving
raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream,
and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.
To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
"Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."
Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
the command "to bring forth" was issued:--
1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.
2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, _the
fowl of the air_.
3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.
4. _Let us make man in our own image_.
And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the _Cosmos_ to escape him,
would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.
But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
successfully entered upon by the Abbé Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and
others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
established by inductive methods.
_Nihil ex nihilo_ is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as _omne
vivum ex vivo._ That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary least
considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without some
vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
two of a physiological or vital unit? [5] At all events, it is as
impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one unit as the other.
And so long as legitimate induction supports the doctrine of the Bible
Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary assumption which is wholly
without verification or proof.
But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
incredibility.
It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
--contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
"mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand _questio
vexata_ of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs of
all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (_i.e._
each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
hitherto occurring upon our globe.
Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
experiments of the renowned Abbé Spallanzani--all the alleged "fantastic
assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism," by
whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "_molecules
organiques,_" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all the
_primordia viventium_ of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular machinery"
and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert Spencer and
Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of life ever
spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find that they
all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the Bible
Genesis, _and all are explained by them._ We say _all_, with one exception
only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and majestic this
exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came from no "muddy
vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him into existence. He
who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was to be created only
a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God created He him." And,
breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, _he became a living soul_!
Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because _you_ cannot
annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
compass of _your_ brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at _His_ sovereign and
commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the threshold
of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of spirit,
and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or "multiplieth words
without knowledge."
But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."
What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
power of God which operates (continuously operates) _to impart life to
inanimate nature._[6] From the connection in which it here stands it means
this, as in other connections it means the power which operates
(continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and good (God-like)
in man. There is no implication in the text that this life-giving
principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On the contrary,
there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just as operative
now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given by Professor
Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout inanimate
nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased its
operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of
mind.[7] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a part nature,
and a part not nature.
Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the _ZRA_.
the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
first received its _baptism of life_ from God--in other words, derived the
animating principle of life from the source of all Life.
And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the
vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused
to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a
definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the
animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most
remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic
idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor
any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both
vegetal and animal life.
St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturæ non quseritur
miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediæval authority.
What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just
such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth,"
however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of
our modern scientists.
And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral _plexus_, and
Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
_a priori_ induction will ever extend this line _or plexus_ to man. The
developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that
will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter
up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in
his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or
downwards.[8] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an
archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be,
and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in
nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations.
Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp
and woof of their scientific formulæ respecting life, will never stand
before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any
thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present
against them.
Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors
whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all
his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him,
this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the
_genetrix omnium viventium_, or the living _mother_ on whose bosom he
shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields
beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails
not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal
principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the
forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different
forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any
apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care
and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie
grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious
_gramma_ coveted by his favorite game.
And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
But how about the preëxisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the
megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
and we will answer it.
But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
modifications, combinations, etc.,[9] chemically as well as molecularly
considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a
mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the
argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some
one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.
For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
Intelligence" of the universe.
Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted
era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made
their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's
more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary
for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is
concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively
possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his
essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion.
All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits
an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment
were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic
theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus,
or the first fungus-spore. [10]
All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of
both plants and animals have _disappeared_ from the earth for the want of
the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and flourished.
What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that they
originally _appeared_ from the presence of these identical conditions,
whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have occurred? We put
this question not simply because the Bible Genesis asserts that "_out of
the ground_ made the Lord God to grow" every plant of the field "before it
was in the earth," as well as every herb of the field "before it grew;"
nor because it declares that their primordial germs are in the earth; nor
because it speaks of the earth as containing within itself the "animating
principle of life." But we put it on the irrefragable logic of the
materialist's own premises and conclusions. They may use other and
different physiological terms from what we should care to employ, but
their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force," their "highly
differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing more than what
we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital conditions," etc. Their
preference for the terms they employ, over essential "qualities" or
"properties" of matter, is entirely due to the obvious invalidity of their
conclusions, except as their physical theory of life may help them out of
an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more convenient term on which to
allege the _de novo_ origin of life--its spontaneous manifestation in
their experimental flasks--than any vital principle primarily inhering in
matter, and manifesting itself whenever conditions favor. It is to
validate their own reasoning that they construct their fallacious
force-premises, from which to draw their materialistic inductions. In
other words, theirs is the fallacy of _non causa pro causa,_ or that
vicious process of reasoning which alleges some other than the real cause
of vital manifestation, and fastens induction where none is legitimately
inferable.
Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree
that in all life-manifestations there must be some preëxisting vital force
or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or animal, can
come into existence.[11] M. Pouchet says: "I have always thought that
organized beings were animated by forces which are in no way reducible to
physical or chemical forces." The Abbé Needham is satisfied to formulate a
"force végetative," so far as plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably
falls back on vital force or energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique,"
which is essentially inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations.
According to the latter, the whole universe is an "_organisme absolu_"
constantly endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all
conceivable directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full
interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their
theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life
is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
from all vital manifestation.
An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [12] which
merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover,
day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But
this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's
speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution
theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his
"archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature
adheres to perfected forms.
Goethe accepts the doctrine of _vis centripeta_, beyond the influence of
which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying or
variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned _by_ circumstances
_to_ circumstances," as the eagle to the air and mountain top, the mole to
the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to the water in which he
frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and the night air. We
should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after the Great
Architect's pattern, _to_ circumstances, and is only varied _by_
circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of variability. For
the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal pattern, after
which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals has been
fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose mind, or
rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential
archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this
_Archeus_ pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from
the mind of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but
from the one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all
living things were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that
world "which," according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that
is contained sensibly in our world."
This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the
influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical
modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of
types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any
way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make
nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even
then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we
attribute to nature a _purpose_ to modify persistent forms under a law
that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an
archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of
intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the
type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not,
therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle
or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any
predetermining will or agency in the universe.
Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be
thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological
character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations,
before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an
effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind
would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language
itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern
materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least
one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic
reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories
and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or
entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract
ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or
co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The
personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and
obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if
not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality,
spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to
fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the
ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God,
angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of
worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites,
ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and
other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and
machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our
language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals,
and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most
majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the
iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of
Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.
But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.
Chapter III.
Alternations of Forest Growths.
No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them
satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the
phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that
these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of
scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and
ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer.
And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes
of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can
only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of
these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly
lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those
noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States
Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in
question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor
any very important new facts given.
If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we
think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and
collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our
ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this
ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its
implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into
silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This
remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in
themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true
that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter
of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the
further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in
the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the
waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature,
with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the
11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was
specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in
this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested
by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution,
but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts
and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time
determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new
genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.
Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he
treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough
to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other
species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before
the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade
over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps
centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees
belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore
again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may
have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other
causes; but, in many instances, _this explanation is not probable_." It is
manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this connection,
in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed" any other
germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits that, in many
instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the dissemination of
seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the exploded notion that
vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous instances where seeds
have grown after lying dormant for ages in the earth." He further says, in
the same connection, that "their vitality seems almost imperishable while
they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them;" although he
is reluctant to accept the accounts of "the growth of seeds which had lain
for ages in the ashy dryness of the Egyptian catacombs," believing that
they should be received with great caution, if not rejected altogether.
But why he should scruple about receiving these speculative accounts of
ancient Egyptian cereals, which are sometimes hawked about the country for
two and three dollars a seed, and, in the same breath, accept the absurder
theory that seeds may lie dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and
most enduring woods will utterly perish and disappear in a few brief
years, is wholly inexplicable to us, except as an hypothesis to force a
conclusion, or to account for the otherwise unaccountable alternations of
forest growths.
But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide
seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not
entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would
be protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and
other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr.
Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by
actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and
thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils
below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach
them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may
answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a
nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the
indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a
like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly
be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light
of all the facts herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are
speedily perishable by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed
that will survive beyond the second year when subjected to such
exposure. If they do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
utterly gone the second year, as hopelessly so as if they had been cast
into the fire and consumed to ashes.
But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes
the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil
brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants
entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up,
in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have
remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest
calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer;
and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's
rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil
burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be
found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in
Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its
waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that
which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from
Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from
Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various
depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil
must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner
brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were
wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they
did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and
species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by
us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to
microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of
any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully
examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several
large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation.
But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although
the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the
seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of
this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into
newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years,
is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without
sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.
It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of
hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the
neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than
oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and
entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that
the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter,
while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the
"germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber
growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as
in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the
natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by
the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other
natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or
"vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting
"the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis
has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first
instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and
implicitly followed since.
In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New
York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake
Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and
growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch,
ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by
the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The
trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally
poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple,
spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a
tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important
fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that
replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths,
supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does
not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were
altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the
tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance
and growth.
The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely
communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for
fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of
1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white
oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for
propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted
too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any
special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the
immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from
natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."
In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a
storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and
was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated
that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago)
"had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that
prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no
neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the
nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been
promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is,
unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune
season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.
In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West,
the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long
before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the
alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and
through forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was
possible that their seeds could have been derived. One of these
tornadoes the writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South
Alabama, and he is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that
the instances are rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean
path of a tornado, through any of our primitive forests, has been
succeeded by the same growth of timber as that borne down by the winds.
Where the path of this ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine
forest, a clean growth of oak was buttressed on either side by pine;
and _vice versa_, where it swept an oak forest. And it is certain that
the tornado, whenever it may have occurred, could have exhibited no such
discriminating freak as alternately to distribute acorns in pine
growths, and pine cones in oak growths, either to make good a scientific
theory or balk an unscientific one.
Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some
years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground
was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had
been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch
had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly
taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a
deciduous, and _vice versa._ We have any number of well authenticated
facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give
place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.
Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to
which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the
swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place
without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (_Larix Americana_) may
be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded by
the balsam fir (_Abies balsamea_), which may be probably caused by the
partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen tree
that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for a
period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed
extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a
state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were
manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the
soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the
accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable
for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at
that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any
considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently
granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up
in the interest of speculative parties.
But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population
found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the
country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the
swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
Bible genesis nowhere affirms.
Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
"seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible
genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.
He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
by an oak forest, _where there were a few oaks previously scattered
through the woods to furnish seed._" This is a very cautious, as well as
circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made, had
his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz, Professor
Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously scattered through
the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical considerations" taken into
account by him, as a philosophical botanist rather than a practical one.
They were necessary for the extreme caution with which he would state a
proposition when its "conditioning facts" were not fully known by him. His
anxiety to account for the appearance of an oak forest in the place of a
pine, where the latter had been cut off, was commendable enough to justify
him in a pretty broad supposition, but not in any such general statement
as he here makes. Had he consulted any of the older inhabitants of
Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his own state, he would have
found that not a few oak forests had succeeded the pine without the
intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered acorns, in the
localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of distribution have
been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in localties where the
shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white oak itself. No
squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get hickory nuts, and
few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and thinner-shelled walnuts
are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is provident, but no more so
than he is fastidious in the choice of his food. He never plants acorns
except for his own gratification, and is never gratified with indifferent
food so long as he can command that which is to his liking.
In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those
necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they
inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly
indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the
fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my
correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded _by a
spontaneous growth of trees of another kind._" In the sense in which he
manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest
might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on
that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged
seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the _Acer_ family
excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in
a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or
chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones.
A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor
accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural
tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in
nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous
generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as
we advance in this work.
Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply
unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest
operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to
adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language
in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are
called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this
almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of
Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There
is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a
spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also
mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks
following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold
places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm,
etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was
expressed at the asking of the question."
These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by
Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted
for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring
conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis.
They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if
the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not
"spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as
with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too
meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory
conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding
trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking
lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are
facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the
presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said
to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at
distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any
native forest from which seed could have been derived.
Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a
town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that
had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste,
"yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, _where there was not a
single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the
place_." Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white
pine, of which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory."
He is greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but
readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles
by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to
Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of
them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been
caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This
might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole
grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been
provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular
locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not
have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way,
and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the
Bible genesis.
While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he
imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the
cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest,
within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to
vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by
any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils,
at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation;
and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not
germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows
that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the
nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty
inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two
years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as
so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is
hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their
old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings
stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome
were laid.
Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered
few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as
well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest,
which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient
vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.),
on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago
(_circiter_ 1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding
region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my
grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It
contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As
the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this
ground there sprang up a grove of white pines, covering the field and
retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a
single oak or chestnut tree;" and he adds, "_there was not a single pine
whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to
have been planted on this spot_." He supposes, however, that the "seeds"
(pine cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought
them up "within the limits of vegetation."
As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all
that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany,
and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with
forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably
covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de
Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of
the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same
idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered
with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the
time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the
fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white
oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and
many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above
the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have
succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the
hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact
that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at
intervals among the larger deciduous trees.
Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than
that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on
gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at
once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or
where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts
which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order
of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the
different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps,
_vice versa_. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a
brief summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of
the country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less
well-informed on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says
that in the region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871,
"dense growths of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing
rapidly;" but he omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to
state the previous growths of timber, or whether there were any
neighboring growths of poplar along the track of the burnt district from
which seed might have been derived.
Here are some of his more important statements:--
"At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew
up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."
"At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other
deciduous trees, and _vice versa_."
"In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off,
oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."
"In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."
"In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft
maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal
more of the last named than any other."
This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were
simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one
that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the
"Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information
really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his
suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and
surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of
the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any
neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new
forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important
physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to
proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to
be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading
countries of Europe.
It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in
New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by
the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by
pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated,
without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the
absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other
soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been
ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm,
and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in
the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we
often see a hazel coppice; after a time the cratægus, and finally the
oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite
aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes
the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness
of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.
He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of
timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey
from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of
Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt
wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up
immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In
noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a
very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce,
pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently
produce nothing but poplars, _where none of that species of tree was
previously to be found"_. But facts of a similar character are too
numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent
authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial
germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The
appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of
them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of
passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable
circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to
plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have
occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a
physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.
There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify
a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine
forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive
areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and
yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over
the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the
ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it,
after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have
been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter
whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the
tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born
forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living,
indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was
specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible
genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and
others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational
theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest
growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too
confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of
scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of
pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when
effectually turned on the sneerer.
Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a
singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the
appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake,
which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in
this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a
disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the
value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants
were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the
earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer.
And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not
conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain
were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital
units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a
circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as
all candid and impartial readers will agree.
Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the
theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except
that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to
meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his
position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or
to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish
little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader
will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I
had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several
hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native
vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than
is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not
only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed,
_but twelve species of plants _ (not including grasses and sedges)
flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath."
The attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different
meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled
by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only
in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make
their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the
fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the
soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want
of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made
their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater
changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New
England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by
the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The
open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more
aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle
for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly
seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find,
beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary
for their more successful growth.
No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold
centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere
obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its
bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in
obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God,"
she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the
eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind
guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will." But
forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise up
in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for ages,
or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If the
butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies
dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In
all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in
mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains
to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen,
mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in
her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first
command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it
expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been
implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of
seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields
them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so
that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the
language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--
"Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor--
_Both thanks and use_."
Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws
of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will
never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her
glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the
seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her
bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant
and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her
legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful
breast, and her "copy is eterne."
Chapter IV.
The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
fact, it remains wholly unsolved.
This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we
have said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific
path. Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on
vegetable physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our
cereal crops have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the
"ashy dryness" of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in
which to preserve them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all
their machinery for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are
the catacombs to be despised, as compared with any out-door means of
storage yet suggested by the wit of man. The only means nature has of
storage, or rather of preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed
back to her bosom--the earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it
may be speedily quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself.
For "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much
more is that dead which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned
to nature's bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it
quickens or not, it dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from
the earth, any more than there is for the occupants of the exhumed
mummy-cases of ancient Thebes.
The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.
Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
"dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil
exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered
with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to
show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain
dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they _do_
follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.
The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
"Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
connected with the case was, that _the raspberry seeds were recovered from
the stomach_ (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society,
where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.
But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
one." This statement must be received _cum grano_. The Romans never used
coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a
battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."
All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
seeds, as well as the _obolus_ in the mouth of the dead soldier, should be
found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If they had
withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred years, in the
surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not to have
obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible for
belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."
From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
"Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.
Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is _Erechthites
hieracifolia_, and it is well known to the botanists of New England. Its
seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and it is
not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by birds,
and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
those _grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
southern hemisphere_, not within thousands of miles from the clearing in
which they so promptly make their appearance.
Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
its place.
The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of
the burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil
where a coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but
from "vital units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those
taking advantage of environing conditions, just as _Bacteria_ or
_Torultz_ spring from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots
of stramonium, in a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring
directly from the surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living
organism must have perished in the heat, and not at any considerable
depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the
burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when
there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from
the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken
their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural
"gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account
for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick
bed of it covering the entire ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in
this and other cases, is wholly out of the question; as much so as when
white clover makes its appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds
of miles away from where there has been a single sprig of clover growing
in a thousand years. Every closely observant person, living for any
length of time on our western prairies, is familiar with the fact that
when the rank and hardier grasses, usually growing thereon, are
effectually fed down by stock, and especially by sheep, the prairie
grasses disappear, and the ground at once comes in with white clover, and
the other nutritious gramma or grasses of our common pasture lands. No
seed has been sown in these localities, and none could have been found
had every square inch of the surface soil been examined by the most
powerful microscope. The white clover and these nutritious grasses make
their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation
did on the earth, not from seed, but from preëxisting vital units or
primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the
necessary conditions for their development and growth.
The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.
The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.
These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
"natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
"the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.
Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
late civil war, a little leguminous plant (_Lespedeza striata_) sprang
up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known how it
came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some parts of
the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as a forage
plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of this
plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon, or the
phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain localities
in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very general
appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was not
particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from one
southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant, they
naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation, especially in
those sections where other forage plants and nutritious gramma were not
abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance just the same had
the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for aggressive
legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.
It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
have named.
This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
"conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates,"
"_molecules organiques_," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
"molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
with matter--_molar_ motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass,
and _molecular_ motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its
unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
other words, it is simply a _process_ or _mode_ of action, and stands in
about the same relation to matter as _growth_ does to a living plant or
tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or
subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its
indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an
additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
"force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but
it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as
it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in
both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor
less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises
having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of
moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that
matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a
co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely
physical hypothesis of life.
But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
local fern (_Schizoea pusilla_) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey,
affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis
of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was
at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our
ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for _Bacteria_ in
the blood, _Torulæ_ in the tissues, plastide particles, morphological
cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the smallest conceivable
"unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the lordliest and most defiant
forest oak that ever bared its arms to the storms and tempests of
centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk its head with an air of
affected incredulity, and superciliously turn aside from this hypothesis,
because it does not shock our veneration for the Sacred Scriptures, but
let its special advocates advance some more consistent and rational
life-theory than that of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force,"
or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in confessing that they are unable
to draw the first line between "living matter" and "dead matter," as they
absurdly use these terms.
It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
"war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
growth of local vegetations.
And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
less useful to man.
But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
they _might_ produce life _de novo_.[13] But the most daring physicist
would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his
knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to
"molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon
such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking.
It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
in the appearance and geographical distribution of _fungi_, as universally
obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And although it
may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line between
certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other primitive
manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists agree in
assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
different species of _Mucor_, for instance--for disgusting offal over
decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
atmosphere--the "_pater omnipotens Æther_" of Virg
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