Stéphane Leduc

“ At a time when the miraculous origin of every living being was regarded as an unchangeable verity, and was defended like a sacred dogma, Lamarck boldly formulated his theory of evolution, with all its attendent consequences, from spontaneous generation to the genealogy of man. ”

“ Life was formerly regarded as a phenomenon entirely separated from the other phenomena of Nature, and even up to the present time Science has proved wholly unable to give a definition of Life; evolution, nutrition, sensibility, growth, organization, none of these, not even the faculty of reproduction, is the exclusive appanage of life.
Living things are made of the same chemical elements as minerals; a living being is the arena of the same physical forces as those which affect the inorganic world. ”

“ Whatever our opinion as to its signification, osmotic growth demands the attention of every mind devoted to the study of nature. It is a marvellous spectacle to see a formless fragment of calcium salt grow into a shell, a madrepore, or a fungus, and this as the result of a simple physical force. Why should the study of osmotic growth attract less attention than the formation of crystals, on which so much time and labour has been bestowed in the past? ”

“ It was only towards the middle of last century that mankind in the long search after unity in nature began to realize that all the movements of the universe are the manifestations of a single agent, which we call energy. In reality all the phenomena of nature may be conceived as diverse forms of motion, and the word "energy" is the common expression applied to all the various modes of motion in the universe. It was by the study of heat, and more especially of thermodynamics, that we obtained our conceptions of the science of energetics. ”

“ We have seen that living beings are transformers of energy and of matter, evolutionary in form and liquid in consistency; that they are solutions of colloids and crystalloids separated by osmotic membranes to form microscopic cells, or consisting merely of a gelatinous mass of protoplasm, with a nucleus of slightly differentiated material. The elementary phenomenon of life is the contact of two different solutions. This is the initial physical phenomenon from which proceed all the other phenomena of life in accordance with the ordinary chemical and physical laws. ”

“ It may be objected that the substance of an osmotic growth is continually undergoing change, whereas a living organism transforms into its own substance the extraneous matter which it borrows from its environment. The distinction, however, is only an apparent one. The substance of a living being is also continually undergoing chemical change; it does not remain the same for a single instant. We see an evidence of this change in the evolution of age; the substance of the adult is not that of the infant. ”

“ When we consider the ignorance in which we still remain as to the phenomena which pass before our very eyes, how can we expect to understand those which occurred in past ages, when the physical and chemical conditions were so immensely different from those which obtain in our own time? What do we know even now of the physical and chemical phenomena which take place in the unfathomed depths of the ocean, where for aught we know even at the present time the same {168}process may be going on—the genesis of life, and the emergence of living beings out of the inanimate mineral world? ”

“ It is impossible to define life, not only because it is complex, but because it varies in different living beings. The phenomena which constitute the life of a man are far other than those which make up the life of a polyp or a plant; and in the more simple forms life is so greatly reduced that it is often a matter of difficulty to decide whether a given form belongs to the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom. ”

“ The resemblance between an osmotic growth and a living organism is much closer than that between a living being and a crystal, there being not only an analogy of form, but also of structure and of function. In order to find the physical parallel to life, we must turn to osmosis and osmotic growth rather than to crystals and crystallization.
The first and most striking analogy between living beings and osmotic growths is that of form. The morphogenic power of osmosis gives rise to an infinite variety of forms. An osmotic growth, even at the first sight, suggests the idea of a living thing. ”

“ Different forms of energy may be measured in different ways, but all forms of energy can be measured either in units of mechanical work or in units of heat, in kilogramme-metres or foot-pounds or in calories, according as the energy in question is transformed into mechanical work or into heat. The first principle of energetics, the conservation of energy, may be thus expressed: "Energy is eternal; none is ever created, and none is ever lost. The quantity of energy in the universe is invariable, and is conserved for ever in its integrity." ”

“ In his Philosophie Zoologique, which appeared in 1809, Lamarck put forth his claim to regard all the phenomena of life, of living beings, and of man himself as pertaining to the domain of natural phenomena. According to him, all bodies which are met with in nature, organic and inorganic alike, are subject to the same laws. Life is a physical phenomenon, and all the processes of life are due to mechanical causes, either physical or chemical. ”

“ The doctrine of evolution should reconstitute every link in the chain of beings from the simplest to the most complicated; it cannot afford to leave out the most important of all, viz. the missing link between the inorganic and the organic kingdoms. If there is a chain, it must be continuous in all its parts, there can be no solution of continuity.
Evolutionists like Lamarck and Haeckel admit spontaneous generation, not as the most probable, but as the only possible explanation of the phenomenon of life. ”

“ The essential characteristic of life is often said to be nutrition—the phenomenon by which a living organism absorbs matter from its environment, subjects it to chemical metamorphosis, assimilates it, and finally ejects the destructive products of metamorphosis into the surrounding medium. But this characteristic is also common to a great number of ordinary chemical reactions, so that we cannot call it peculiar to life. Consider, for instance, a fragment of calcium chloride immersed in a solution of sodium carbonate. ”

“ All living beings are composed of elementary organizations called cells. In its complete state, a cell consists of a membrane or envelope containing a mass of protoplasm, in the centre of which is a nucleus of differentiated protoplasm. This nucleus may in its turn contain a nucleolus. In some cases the cell is merely a protoplasmic mass without a visible envelope, so that a cell may be defined as essentially a mass of protoplasm provided with a nucleus.
A living organism may consist merely of a single cell, which is able alone to accomplish all the functions of life. ”

“ On this point Lamarck speaks most clearly: "Although it is customary when one speaks of the members of the animal or vegetable kingdom to call them products of nature, it appears that no definite conception is attached to the expression. Our preconceived notions hinder us from recognising the fact that Nature herself possesses all the faculties and all the means of producing living beings in any variety. She is able to vary, very slowly but without cessation, all the different races and all the different forms of life, and to maintain the general order which we see in all her works." ”

“ Evolution is but the expression of this law of continuity, this succession of phenomena following one another like the links of a chain, without discontinuity through the vast extent of time and space.
The other great universal law, that of conservation, applies with equal force to living and to inanimate things. This law asserts the uncreateability and the indestructibility of matter and of energy. A given quantity of matter and of energy remains absolutely invariable through all the transformations through which it may pass. ”

“ If we would acquire a real knowledge of what constitutes life, of what it consists, what are the causes and the laws which give rise to this wonderful phenomenon of nature, and how life can be the source of the multitude of forms presented to us by living organisms, we must before all consider with great attention the differences which exist between inorganic and living bodies ”

“ Even now children attribute life to everything that moves. For them a little bird still lives in the inside of a watch, and produces the tick-tick of the wheels. In modern times, however, we have learnt that everything in nature moves, so that motion of itself cannot be considered as the characteristic of life.
Heraclitus aptly compares life to a flame. Aristotle says, "Life is nutrition, growth, and decay,—having for its cause a principle which has its end in itself, namely ἐντελέχεια." ”

“ All we can say is that certain membranes are more permeable to water than to the substances in solution, and are moreover very unequally permeable to the various substances in solution. As a rule a membrane is much more permeable to a solute whose molecule is of small dimensions. Molecules of salt, for instance, pass through such a membrane much more quickly than do those of sugar. ”

“ If this gradual incessant increase of entropy is universal in nature, and if there is no compensatory mechanism, the universe must be tending towards a definite end, when the whole of its energy shall have been transformed into unutilizable heat with a uniform temperature. There is, however, reason to suppose that some such compensatory mechanism does in fact exist. Behind us stretches an infinite past, and in the future we believe that the phenomena of nature will be unrolled in a cycle which has no end. ”

“ Life has invaded the earth, and we see on all sides the inanimate mineral kingdom being changed into a living world."
The admission that life may have appeared on the earth under the influence of natural forces and according to physical laws and conditions different from those of the present era throws a vivid light on the study of biogenesis, spontaneous generation, and evolution. The means of research are now indicated, and we have only to study the documents already in our possession in order to know the conditions which obtained when life first appeared on the globe. ”

“ Although physical science distinguishes three states of matter, solid, liquid, and gaseous, yet here as elsewhere there are no sharp dividing lines, but rather an absolute continuity. We have in fact many intermediate states; between liquids and gases there are the various conditions of vapour, and between liquids and solids we get viscous, gelatinous, and paste-like conditions. The only real difference between solids, liquids, and gases is the intensity of the force of cohesion, which is considerable in solids, feeble in liquids, and absent in gases. ”

“ Synthetic biology includes morphogeny, physiogeny, and synthetic organic chemistry, which is also a branch of synthetic biology, since it deals with the composition of the constituents of living organisms. Synthetic organic chemistry is already a well-organized science, important by reason of the triumphs which it has already gained. The other two branches of biological synthesis, morphogeny, the synthesis of living forms and structures, and physiogeny, the synthesis of functions, can hardly as yet be said to exist as sciences. ”

“ When a number of cells are thus united to constitute a single living being, the various functions of life are divided among different cellular groups. Certain cells become specialized for the accomplishment of a single function, and to each function corresponds a different form of cell. It is thus easy to recognize by their form the nerve cells, the muscle cells which perform the function of movement, and the glandular cells which perform the function of secretion. The cells of a living being are microscopic in size, and it is remarkable that they never attain to any considerable dimensions. ”

“ All the substances which were capable of producing osmotic membranes by mutual contact sprang into growth,—the soluble salts of calcium, carbonates, phosphates, silicates, albuminoid matter, became organized as osmotic productions,—were born, developed, evolved, dissociated, and died. Millions of ephemeral forms must have succeeded one another in the natural evolution of that age, when the living world was represented by matter thus organized by osmosis. ”

“ Like a living thing it ejects into its environment the waste products of its function. Moreover, it grows and develops structures like those of living organisms, and it is sensitive to many exterior changes, which influence its form and development. But these very phenomena—nutrition, assimilation, sensibility, growth, and organization—are generally asserted to be the sole characteristics of life. ”

“ The liquids are the most important constituents of a living organism, since they are the seat of all the chemical and physical phenomena of life. The junction of two liquids of different concentration is the arena in which takes place both the chemical transformation of matter and the correlative transformation of energy. ”