Part 10

But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr. Huxley concedes that these manifestations are differently known to the subject of them. If so, what becomes of his assertion of but a certain number of powers for protoplasm? The manifestations of the higher faculties are not known to the subject of them by contraction, etc. By what, then, are they known? According to Mr. Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of protoplasm; and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm must possess powers other than those of his own assertion. Mr. Huxley’s one great power of contractility, Mr. Huxley himself confesses to be inapplicable here. Indeed, in his Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an avowal as this: “We class _sensations_, along with _emotions_, and _volitions_, and _thoughts_, under the common head of states of _consciousness_; but what consciousness is we know not, and how it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.” Consciousness plainly was not muscular contraction to Mr. Huxley when he wrote his Physiology; it is only since then that he has gone over to the assertion of no power in protoplasm but the triple power, contractility, etc. But the truth is only as his Physiology has it—the cleft is simply, as Mr. Huxley acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side, there is the world of externality, where all is body by body, and away from one another—the boundless reciprocal exclusion of the infinite object. On the other side, there is the world of internality, where all is soul to soul, and away into one another—the boundless reciprocal inclusion of the infinite subject. This—even while it is true that, for subject to be subject, and object, object, the boundless intussuscepted multiplicity of the single invisible point of the one is but the dimensionless casket into which the illimitable Genius of the other must retract and withdraw itself—is the difference of differences; and certainly it is not internality that can be abolished before externality. The proof for the absoluteness of thought, the subject, the mind, is, on its side, pretty well perfect. It is not necessary here, however, to enter into that proof at length. Before passing on, I may simply point to the fact that, if thought is to be called a function of matter, it must be acknowledged to be a function wholly peculiar and unlike any other. In all other functions, we are present to processes which are in the same sense physical as the organs themselves. So it is with lung, stomach, liver, kidney, where every step can be followed, so to speak, with eye and hand; but all is changed when we have to do with mind as the function of brain. Then, indeed, as Mr. Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are admitted, as if by touch of Aladdin’s lamp, to a world absolutely different and essentially new—to a world, on its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire, independent, self-contained, and absolutely _sui generis_, as the world of matter on the other side. It will be sufficient here to allude to as much as this, with special reference to the fact that, so far as this argument is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any the very slightest difference. All the ancient reasons for the independence of thought as against organization, can be used with even more striking effect as against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate this, so much are the arguments in question a common property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its own warrant; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns, “its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.” And that is the strongest argument on this whole side. Throughout the entire universe, organic and inorganic, thought is the controlling sovereign; nor does matter anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in thought, too, that man has _his_ patent of nobility, believes that he is created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man of infinitude.

But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we have seen, a second reference—that, namely, to the excitants, if we may call them so, which _determine_ combination. The _modus operandi_, Mr. Huxley tells us, of preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of new protoplasm, is not more unintelligible than the _modus operandi_ of the electric spark in determining the formation of water; and so both, we are left to infer, are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is rather a favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of this class,” he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion to those who hesitate to conclude from dead to living matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood, too, he argues that, though impotent to restore to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, and should not, consequently, any more hesitate because of any mere difference of form to accept the analysis of dead for that of living protoplasm. It is certainly fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance and impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally so bear them in another; but it is not fair to convert ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power. Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is, then we do know nothing, and that it is strangely idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support for the most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as is really expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted, they are the stultification of all logic. Is the chemistry of living to be seen to be the same as the chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is? We know perfectly well that black is white, for we are absolutely ignorant of either as it is! The _form_ of the calc-spar, which (the spar) we _can_ analyze, we cannot restore; therefore the _form_ of the protoplasm, which we _cannot_ analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in hand; and the chemistry of what is dead may be accepted as the chemistry of what is living! In the case of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while referring to what concerns the forms themselves; that they are totally incommensurable, that in all forms of calc-spar there is no question but of what is physical, while in protoplasm the change of form is introduction into an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in the case immediately before us. No appeal to ignorance in regard to something else, the electric spark, should be allowed to transform another ignorance, that of the action of preëxisting protoplasm, into knowledge, here into _the_ knowledge that the two unknown things, because of non-knowledge, are—perfectly analogous! That this analogy does not exist—that the electric spark and preëxisting protoplasm are, in their relative places, _not_ on the same chemical level—this is the main point for us to see; and Mr. Huxley’s allusion to our ignorance must not be allowed to blind us to it. Here we have in a glass vessel so much hydrogen and oxygen, into which we discharge an electric spark, and water is the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive between this production of water by external experiment and the production of protoplasm by protoplasm? The discrepancy is so palpable that it were impertinent to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the one case, are as unlike the fortuitous food, the living organs, and the long process of assimilation in the other case, as the product water is unlike the product protoplasm. No; that the action of the electric spark should be unknown, is no reason why we should not insist on protoplasm for protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm can only be produced by protoplasm, and each of all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm, only by its own kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we must go to the worm, and for that of the toad-stool to the toad-stool. In fact, if all living beings come from protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for living beings, protoplasm would disappear. Without an egg you cannot have a hen—that is true; but it is equally true that, without a hen, you cannot have an egg. So in protoplasm; which, consequently, in the production of itself, offers no analogy to the production, or precipitation by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water. Besides, if for protoplasm, preëxisting protoplasm, is always necessary, how was there ever a first protoplasm?

Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s analogy does not hold, whether in the one reference or the other, and Mr. Huxley has no warrant for the reduction of protoplasm to the mere chemical level which he assigns it in either. That level is brought very prominently forward in such expressions as these: That it is only necessary to bring the chemical elements “together,” “under certain conditions,” to give rise to the more complex body, protoplasm, just as there is a similar expedient to give rise to water; and that, under the influence of preëxisting living protoplasm, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of protoplasm makes its appearance, just as, under the influence of the electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear, and an equivalent weight of water makes its appearance. All this, plainly, is to assume for protoplasm such mere chemical place and nature as consist not with the facts. The cases are, in truth, not parallel, and the “certain conditions” are wholly diverse. All that is said we can do at will for water, but nothing of what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To say we can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will produce protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances, only to say, and is not to say, that, in this way, we make a chemical experiment. To insist on a chemical analogy, in fact, between water and protoplasm, is to omit the differences not covered by the analogy at all—thought, design, life, and all the processes of organization; and it is but simple procedure to omit these differences only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere.

It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again to the difference—here, however, once more incidentally suggested—between protoplasm and protoplasm. Mr. Huxley, that is, almost in his very last word on this part of the argument, seems to become aware of the bearing of this on what relates to materiality, and he would again stamp protoplasm (and with it life and intellect), into an indifferent identity. In order that there should be no break between the lowest functions and the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions of man), he has “endeavored to prove,” he says, that the protoplasm of the lowest organisms is “essentially identical with, and most readily converted into that of any animal.” On this alleged reciprocal _convertibility_ of protoplasm, then, Mr. Huxley would again found as well an inference of identity, as the further conclusion that the functions of the highest, not less than those of the lowest animals, are but the molecular manifestations of their common protoplasm.

Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function, but of the alleged reciprocal _convertibility_ that is left us now. Is this true, then? Is it true that every organism can digest every other organism, and that thus a relation of identity is established between that which digests and whatever is digested? These questions place Mr. Huxley’s general enterprise, perhaps, in the most glaring light yet; for it is very evident that there is an end of the argument if all foods and all feeders are essentially identical both with themselves and with each other. The facts of the case, however, I believe to be too well known to require a single word here on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley himself pointed out the great difference between the foods of plants and the foods of animals; and the reader may be safely left to think for himself of _ruminantia_ and _carnivora_, of soft bills and hard bills, of molluscs and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility of himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the lobster feeding him; but such pathos is not always applicable; it is not likely that a sponge would be to the stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to the stomach of a sponge.

But a more important point is this, that the functions themselves remain quite apart from the alleged convertibility. We can neither acquire the functions of what we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to speak by feeding on us. No possible manure of human brains will enable a corn-field to reason. But if functions are inconvertible, the convertibility of the protoplasm is idle. In this inconvertibility, indeed, functions will be seen to be independent of mere chemical composition. And that is the truth: for functions there is more required than either chemistry or physics.

It is to be acknowledged—to notice one other incidental suggestion, for the sake of completeness, and by way of transition to the final consideration of possible objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much assisted in his identification of differences, were but the theories of the molecularists, on the one hand, and of Mr. Darwin, on the other, once for all established. The three modes of theorizing indicated, indeed, are not without a tendency to approach one another; and it is precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph for the doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as we have seen—though what he desiderates is an auto-plastic living _matter_ that, produced by ordinary chemical processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing itself into new and higher forms—still begins with the egg. Now the theory of the molecularists would, for its part, remove all the difficulties that, for materialism, are involved in this beginning; it would place protoplasm undeniably at length on a merely chemical level; and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented by such a life-stuff, to account by natural means for everything like an idea or thought that appears in creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must believe the theory of the molecularists still to await the proof; while the theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties peculiar to itself. This theory, philosophically, or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove that design, or the objective idea, especially in the organic world, is developed _in time_ by natural means. The time which Mr. Darwin demands, it is true, is an infinite time; and he thus gains the advantage of his processes being allowed greater _clearness_ for the understanding, in consequence of the _obscurity_ of the infinite past in which they are placed, and of which it is difficult in the first instance to deny any possibility whatever. Still it remains to be asked, Are such processes credible in any time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view is, first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural history of surprising richness; and, second, to support this knowledge by an inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis in arrangement of appearances. Now, in both respects, whether for information or even interest, the value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always remain independent of the argument or arguments that might destroy his leading proposition; and it is with this proposition that we have here alone to do. As said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the design which we see in the organized world, is the result in infinite time of the necessary adaption of living structures to the peculiarities of the conditions by which they are surrounded?

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

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

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

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

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

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