Natural agent

“ It is clear that in these original innate capabilities of the living substance we have a power which alone may fully account for the evolution of the organic world, though natural selection can emphasize and hasten its action. ”

“ The view here advocated, on the other hand, regards the whole organic world as arising and going forward in one harmonious development similar to that which displays itself in the growth and action of each separate individual organism. It also regards each such separate organism as the expression of powers and tendencies not to be accounted for by "Natural Selection" alone, or even by that together with merely the direct influence of surrounding conditions. ”

“ Is life less of a mystery? Has the question concerning the nature of life been even approached in these researches? We think not. That chemical substances of peculiar structure are found in the living organism is true. That these substances are formed by the action of the force called chemical affinity is just as surely a truth. Do these two truths mutually detract from the importance of each other? When the active agent in the formation of the so-called organic bodies became known, a thousand questions could be proposed to one that could be proposed previously. ”

“ It is a fact well known to physiologists that in its simple form this substance is a complete food, capable when taken alone of sustaining life and insuring a full development of the body. It is indeed a natural contrivance exactly adapted to afford those materials which are required for the development and restoration of creatures essentially akin to our own species. ”

“ In the organic world, every individual of necessity springs from some parent, or immediate producing agent; for while inorganic substances are formed by chemical laws alone, we see no case of an animal or plant coming into existence by accident or chance, or chemical operations.
8. Animals and plants are supported by means of nourishment, and die without it. They also increase in size by the addition of new particles of matter to all parts of their substances; while rocks and minerals grow only by additions to their surfaces. ”

“ As with plants so with animals, we find good reason for inferring that while the specialities of the tegumentary parts must be ascribed to the natural selection of favourable variations, their most general traits are due to the direct action of surrounding agencies. Here we come upon the border of those changes which are ascribable to use and disuse. ”

“ Stated concretely in regard to living creatures, the general doctrine of organic evolution suggests, as we all know, that the plants and animals now around us—with all their fascinating complexities of structure and function, of life-history, behaviour, and inter-relations—are the natural and necessary results of long processes of growth and change, of elimination and survival, operative throughout practically countless ages ”

“ His wild notions about the way in which natural causes acted in the production of plants and animals, must not make us forget the merit of his intuition that animals and plants were produced by natural causes. ”

“ We see in these facts some deep organic bond, prevailing throughout space and time, over the same areas of land and water, and independent of their physical conditions. The naturalist must feel little curiosity, who is not led to inquire what this bond is. ”

“ The animal is an agent which transforms, in “an [Pg 93] orderly sequence,” by its processes of metabolism, both energy and substance, resulting in growth, differentiation, multiplication, and behavior. These activities take place in an orderly manner and are dependent upon both energy and substance derived from the environment. For these reasons the processes or changes in metabolism, growth, development, and behavior, in so far as they are responses to the orderly sequence of environmental changes, are ecological problems. ”

“ Organic or vegetative life consists essentially in chemical transformations and molecular motions, occurring under certain conditions and in a certain order. The matter, and the forces which act upon it, are for the most part known ”

“ A corollary of the highest importance may be deduced from the foregoing remarks, namely, that the structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all other organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys. ”

“ My ambition after wisdom is humbled in the dust, whenever I inquire how the first germ of every species came into existence; whenever I consider the details of the varied powers in the energizing agency which originates each successive germ; and the independent, but coincident, passive receptacle which nurtures those germs, and, correcting aberrations, secures the continuity of every species—both acting as joint secondary causes; and whenever I reflect on the growth, maturity, beauty, and variety, of the vegetable kingdom! ”

“ In speaking of the causes which lead to our present knowledge of organic nature, I have used it almost as an equivalent of the word "living," and for this reason,--that in almost all living beings you can distinguish several distinct portions set apart to do particular things and work in a particular way. These are termed "organs," and the whole together is called "organic." And as it is universally characteristic of them, the term "organic" has been very conveniently employed to denote the whole of living nature,--the whole of the plant world, and the whole of the animal world. ”

“ Thus a plant selects through its roots from the elements of the soil, and through its leaves from the elements of the air, those elements and in those quantities that it needs for nourishment and growth. But it has also, by means of thorns or poison juices or other device, to protect itself from being itself selected by some animal for that animal's own nourishment and growth.
So the individual is constantly selecting, and is as constantly on the guard against being selected. The principle of selection among the abundant and varied life is in continual operation. ”

“ yet, they can show that any existing species—animal or vegetable—when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. ”

“ A comparison may also profitably be made between natural conditions and the physiological and vital optima of organisms and to the responses which are made with departures from such conditions. Similar comparisons should be made in the study of the responses of aggregations and associations in natural environments and departures from them. No matter how much we learn, the normal must remain as the ideal, and all departures from and disturbances of such conditions must be interpreted in terms of this fundamental unit. ”

“ Food takes a mid-place, and then come the organic conditions; by which I mean the conditions which depend upon the state of the rest of the organic creation, upon the number and kind of living beings, with which an animal is surrounded. You may class these under two heads: there are organic beings, which operate as 'opponents', and there are organic beings which operate as 'helpers' to any given organic creature. ”

“ Those which we have in common with the vegetable, which are necessary merely to our individual, bodily existence, are called the functions of organic life, because they are common to all organized matter. Those, on the other hand, which are peculiar to animals, which in them are superadded to the possession of the organic functions, are called the functions of animal life. ”

“ But we must first carefully observe, that if we were right in considering (page 239) the chief end of the active living principle of the plant to be its formation, the first active living principle in the animal likewise must be a tendency to acquire individual existence. The whole animal body, as far as regards nutrition, growth, secretion, and its being engaged in a continual change of matter in the parts already formed (the vegetative as well as the higher and properly animal parts) , lives absolutely the life of the plant. ”

“ In order to obtain a Science of Biology, we must analyse the Idea of Life. It has been proved by the biological speculations of past time, that Organic Life cannot rightly be solved into Mechanical or Chemical Forces, or the operation of a Vital Fluid, or of a Soul. ”

“ The views of the physiologists, who reject the vital force and explain the phenomena of life by physical and chemical laws, have robbed life of its mysterious and most directly operative principle, and pulled down the strong wall of separation between organic and inorganic nature. ”

“ Various observers have maintained that there were conditions under which the lower forms of organic life were developed independently of all such accessories, but other, and equally competent, naturalists who have attempted to investigate the subject, have obtained conflicting results. ”

“ The Past Condition of Organic Nature In the lecture which I delivered last Monday evening, I endeavoured to sketch in a very brief manner, but as well as the time at my disposal would permit, the present condition of organic nature, meaning by that large title simply an indication of the great, broad, and general principles which are to be discovered by those who look attentively at the phenomena of organic nature as at present displayed. ”

“ It is here assumed that the phenomena of organic behaviour are susceptible of scientific discussion and elucidation. But even assuming that an adequate explanation in terms of antecedence and sequence shall be thus attained by the science of the future, this will not then satisfy, any more than our inadequate explanations now satisfy, those who seek to know the ultimate meaning and reason of it all: What makes organic matter behave as we see it behave? what drives the wheels of life, as it drives the planets in their courses? ”

“ This is the first great attempt to construct a scientific, physiological theory of the development of organic life and to prove that the physiological laws and the chemical and physical forces that rule in nature to-day must also have been at work in the world of yesterday. ”

“ This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." ”

“ As in the chemical production of any new combination of matter, two kinds of particles appear to be necessary; one of which must possess the power of attraction, and the other the aptitude to be attracted, as a magnet and a piece of iron; so in vegetable or animal combinations, whether for the purpose of nutrition or for reproduction, there must exist also two kinds of organic matter; one possessing the appetency to unite, and the other the propensity to be united ”

“ Wherever the order of organic nature is exposed to the view of zoologists and botanists, it expels this conception; and the conception survives only in connexion with imagined places, where the order of organic nature is unknown. ”

“ Joseph Leidy, in a paper on entophyta in living animals, wrote as follows: "The essential conditions of life are five in number, namely: a germ, nutritive matter, air, water, heat, the four latter undoubtedly existing in the interior of all animals." ”

“ The theory applied to organic being is substantially this: there is, potentially, in every organism a higher manifestation. Its evolution is secured by the relation of its organic tendency to its environment. ”

“ The plant, in virtue of a power peculiar to itself, which no art or skill of man can imitate, transmutes dead inorganic matter into organic matter, suited to the sustenance of animal life, and without which animals cannot live. ”

“ Now, as in an animal a piece of bone, muscle, or skin, and in a plant a fragment of the wood, leaf, or fruit, may be considered as organic, but cannot be called an organism, all substances, except plants and animals, observable in and upon the body of the earth, so far indeed as they are parts of the terrestrial organism, are to be regarded as organic and as parts of a living thing, but not as organisms possessing an independent life. ”

“ Take an example from one of the lower forms of organic life,--a common vegetable. Will any one assert that the surrounding inorganic elements of air, earth, heat, and water produce its peculiar form? Though some, or all, of these may be essential to its developement, they are so only as its predetermined correlatives, without which its existence could not be manifested; and in like manner must the peculiar form of the vegetable preëxist in its life,--in its idea,--in order to evolve by these assimilants its own proper organism. ”

“ As the brute creation, as well as human beings, share in a physical organization which expresses each variety of life, there is not the same sharply-dividing line between the various categories of animal life as there is between organic and inorganic Nature. ”

“ Many of the wonderful operations of Nature, and the changes which take place in substances around us, are, by its means, revealed to us. In every manufacture, art, or walk of life, the chemist possesses an advantage over his unskilled neighbor. It is necessary to the farmer and gardener, as it explains the growth of plants, the use of manures, and their proper application: and indispensable to the physician, that he may understand the animal economy, and the effects which certain causes chemically produce; and the nature of animal, vegetable, and mineral poisons. ”