Edmund Montgomery

“ This is evidently the real import of the momentous controversy now provoked anew, on deeper grounds than ever before, by the adoption of the evolution hypothesis on the part of Science. In all quarters of our globe, from every laboratory and study, where the investigation of any branch of Nature is methodically pursued, we hear the voice of Science proclaiming, with all but unanimous accord, one and the same truth, that through natural development, from lowest beginnings, has grown, step by step, all of which we can ever gain any knowledge. ”

“ We clearly conceive the manner how, and the conditions by which, motility, this most prominent vital manifestation, constitutes an inherent property of the living substance. Do we as yet comprehend in the same way the intimate modes of activity which constitute the properties appertaining to inorganic substances? Is any kind of those peculiar motions which form the scientific essence of the various forces of inorganic Nature so strictly and deeply intelligible as has now become that specific motion which forms the scientific essence of the force of life? ”

“ No, we are very far yet from having solved the riddle of final causes and natural synthesis. We stand on the outside, perplexed as ever, in spite of Hume's concentrative naturalism, and Kant's schools of criticism and transcendentalism. No word of prophetic speech, or weighing knowledge, has yet uttered the true meaning of things. Our mind, with its shallow dip, emotional and mechanical, does but pierce the rippling face of creative profundity. ”

“ So, till quite lately, in the history of human thought, but very slight advance was made in the solution of the central puzzle, concerning ideality and reality. Modern Science, disgusted at the waste of so much precious energy and earnestness, given up to the elaboration of mere whimsical and visionary interpretations, set out with the positive intention to evade in its investigations any contact with this constant stumbling-block of certitude. ”

“ We do not wish to make known to others that contraction actually occurs in the living substance, for that is notorious. We wish to ascertain for ourselves how this contraction is effected—whether it is the work of entirely new forces exclusively appertaining to life, or whether it is the mechanical expression of molecular forces, with which we are already familiar in the domain of inorganic activities. Is it a specifically vital force which executes the contraction of motility? ”

“ This most weighty truth the science of organization maintains not on mere general grounds or formal conclusions drawn from assumed premises, but it is ready to prove it step by step by actual verification. The subsistence of the reverse supposition is altogether emotional and metaphysical; it rests on fictitious ontology. From foreign spheres an outside hand of power is made to reach forth, and to set going, by dint of will or deed, the precious clock of life, with all its play of sensation and motion, its revealing and its conquering beats. ”

“ The continuity of that surface, on which our understanding is wont to skim the depths of reality, presents sudden chasms. We experience one such sharp mental recoil when we endeavor smoothly to glide from the inorganic into the organic world. For, whatever may be asserted to the contrary, Science does not yet exactly comprehend the transition from lifelessness to life. Nor can it account for, or even follow with any degree of precision, the stages of transformation leading from apparent uniformity of structure to diversity of organization. ”

“ The organic substance of the moner, plus the separating molecule, is the expanded material. The organic substance of the moner, minus the separating molecule, is the contracted material. The activities of expansion and contraction are merely the physical expression of the gradual process of composition or decomposition occurring within the living substance; they are marks of the shifting of the special relation existing between the protoplasm and its medium during the transitional stages from one state of equilibrium to another. ”

“ All we know is, that if so much pressure, so much heat, etc., will effect a new molecular equilibrium in a certain substance, that substance will return to the medium what it has received from it in reassuming its former state.
Will any one pretend to compute the value of the influences which the living substance in the course of ages has absorbed from its medium, in order to become what it at present is? ”

“ There remains only one path, then, through which development can make its entry into the living substance, and this is—be it fully understood—the infinitely toilsome elaboration of molecular complexity by means of ever-reiterated functional disintegration. If it, namely, should happen, that the dynamical influences of the medium are so attuned as to shift and complicate—by force of their sundry specific modes of operation—the molecular equilibrium of the protoplasm, ever so immeasurably little at a time, then, by incessant perseverance, an appreciable organic effect may, at last, be attained. ”

“ Now that we are avowedly appealing to Nature for knowledge, it behooves us to become natural in our mode of thinking. To fix our attention merely on changes and their relation to each other is to grasp at the shadow of reality. ”

“ Only, the specific power of the slightly complicated molecule H2O cannot possibly afford any standard for the estimation of the specific power of the immensely more complicated molecule constituting protoplasm. Protoplasm differs from water in proportion to its synthetical wealth. Whatever synthetical wealth may be the symbol of, in its gradations is to be sought the source of all difference in Nature. This is the gist of what chemistry teaches: the work of Nature consists in molecular synthesis. It has required the ceaseless toil of endless ages to build up the molecule of living matter. ”

“ Yet, to the vindication of the hypothesis of evolution, it is quite indispensable to establish either the essential identity of motion and sensation, or the gradual transformation of one of these modes of existence into the other. For how can evolution maintain its pretensions to universality, if the ideal world remains foreign to it—a mysteriously correlated entity, merely in close correspondence with the outer world, but having with it no genuine and intrinsic sameness of actuality? ”

“ It is the fundamental truth of living reality, in all its native force, which in this unorganized and quickened matter appeals to our understanding, and it needs but candor, simplicity, and courage, to become initiated into the mystery of vitality. ”

“ It is very natural, then, and appropriate, that, seeking a way out of our scientific perplexity, we should direct attention to the study of vitality in its least complicated forms, which manifest the properties of life, and at the same time do not confuse us with structural entanglements. For, wherever we find fixity of differentiated parts already established, there the difficulty begins. The organism gains the appearance of a mechanical contrivance, and we feel at once puzzled as to what is driving and what is driven in the living engine. ”

“ The integration and differentiation of vital function on the one hand, and the preparation and composition of food-material on the other hand, form—as we will become fully aware further on—the two great divisions in the subject-matter of the science of organization, divisions corresponding to the fundamental biplicity of all advanced organization, its animal and its vegetative life. Organization in the sphere of animal life is the expression of the development of manifold outside relations in the vital unit. ”

“ But Science does not yet understand, nor does it pretend to understand, the enigma. Like all previous systems of knowledge, it fails to detect the actual concatenation, the necessary connection or continuous transition, by which these two seemingly heterogeneous experiences are bound together and unified in reality. It does not conceive how motion can possibly generate sensation, or indeed how motion and sensation can in any way be related to each other. ”

“ Vitalism means essentially the era of metaphysical agencies, the sway of extraneous powers coercing a resisting world of stubborn matter. Evolution means the era of inherent efficiency, the interaction of intrinsic powers ever elevating the constant realm of transient existences. It is of great importance, then, not to be deceived with regard to the exact manner in which this decisive vital act, the contraction of motility, is at all times being performed in Nature. ”

“ But life, grown conscious amid incessant struggle and remorseless fate, feels now sufficiently inured and emboldened not to shrink from prying with utmost earnestness into the secret of its own significance. ”

“ The organism then represents nothing but a force-directing engine, in which the combustion of compounds previously put together in vegetables constitutes the actual driving force. Vital manifestations, accordingly, can be only due to the action of the force liberated from vegetable compounds and applied to the organic machinery. Poor Science, of all-powerful vitality, thou art very young yet, and amazingly unconscious withal!
The moving substance, the protoplasm, plays just so much or just so little the part of machinery as the steam does in the steam-engine. ”

“ In another stage of the inquiry we will learn the exact effect which restitutive material, when not accurately complemental, does actually exert on the protoplasm. I will here only mention that it has, very demonstrably, only the power specifically to deteriorate the same, and not in the least the power to give it any impulse toward higher development. In the course of organic progress it is the living substance which lifts the food to the level of its own requirements; not the food which confers higher vital powers on the protoplasm. ”

“ If at all attainable, here it is, with our diminutive specimens of vitality, that true insight is to be gained. At any rate, we cannot leave the inquiry till we know, or till we have become fully convinced, that vital phenomena, even in their elements, are impervious to human knowledge. ”

“ But, if we further take into consideration that the influences of the medium are themselves of a manifold nature, each kind affecting the protoplasm with a specific energy of its own, it can be readily conceived that a most complicated molecular disturbance must ensue. This must be all the more the case in a substance in which the forces of the medium have not each their definite, circumscribed, and attuned channel of functional stimulation; but are attacking more or less every part of its circumference. ”

“ The entire result of development is preserved in the synthetical intricacies of matter and ether, the sensible and the supersensible substratum. All developmental achievement is embodied in what we chemically call complexity of composition. The more complex a substance, the greater its intrinsic value, the more specific its inherent power, and the less congruous in consequence its response to outside influences. ”

“ Thus it has liberated us from a thralldom infinitely more pitiful than any form of common slavery—the thralldom of our own vicious and cruel superstitions. In many ways it has enriched our lives a thousand-fold, and we may, in future, expect from it an ever-increasing harvest of similar benefits. ”

“ I have conjured up into the medium of shadowy words this most vague fancy of an organic epoch in science, because I firmly believe that we are already in possession of a clew to the means and ways by which the development of the living substance has been and is still being achieved ”

“ If, in contemplating this truth, so positively disclosed by the study of living matter, it should become evident that the display of all other force is exactly of the same stimulated and not transferred nature, then, surely, a great advantage will have been thus gained toward a correct understanding of natural phenomena and their relation to each other. ”

“ If we can only gain an actual insight into the conditions upon which these various well-defined vital phenomena are dependent, if we can succeed in establishing their direct relation, their immediate continuity with the rest of the world, then we cannot possibly be far from having reached the solution of the first phase of our problem.
There can be no manner of doubt that the secrets of the origin of vitality, and of the rise of organization, must all lie encompassed in these most unsophisticated dots of living material. What more enticing prospect for scientific investigation could be found? ”

“ A certain, even quantitatively definite relation obtains between the intensity of stimulation and the stimulated effect, but that relation is neither one of equivalence nor of convertibility. This fact is universal in Nature, but becomes the more obvious the less the mutually affecting substances resemble each other. It is just as impossible that one kind of force can be converted into another kind of force, as it is impossible for any kind of force to originate out of nothing, or to exist without substratum. ”

“ Here, then, we have all the fundamental properties of life, without any of its morphological complications. By dispensing, for once, with all elaborate equipment, and by executing her principal performances with such deliberate distinctiveness and openness, it is as if Nature were here purposely inviting us to penetrate her vital mysteries. ”

“ We watch a moner for hours, for days. There it is, ever continuing without intermission to expand and to contract; alternately to suffer decomposition and to accomplish its recomposition. A blank sameness, an almost thought-paralyzing monotony of life, is thus exhibited by many of these primitive beings. Only always expansion and contraction, by means of that same kind of reintegration and disintegration. ”

“ Let none, then, remain in doubt that it is the serious intent of evolutionists so to unfold the system of Nature, the philosophy of synthesis, of organization, as to make it eventually the bearer on a strictly scientific foundation of all manner of truth. ”

“ OF late years the hypothesis of the gradual and continuous evolution of the universe and its parts has become the growing conviction of almost all scientific minds. The main drift of the new philosophy, the central aim of scientific exertion, is to establish by means of exact investigation the reality and true order of this natural development of things. After much anxious guess-work in which the emotions have been profoundly implicated, we begin at last calmly and positively to desire to know how deeply our existence is interwoven with the sensible world everywhere surrounding us. ”

“ Scientists are becoming more and more conscious that, even in their least complicated suppositions and inquiries, both those elements of the actual world are always inextricably involved. Before the steadfast glance of Science, the eternal, adamantine atoms, questioned as to the essence of their subsistence and resistance, dissolve into unextended, immaterial centres of force. ”