Organic life

“ 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. ”

“ According to my conception, the physical and chemical changes which organisms experience during life through the action of the environment, through light or want of light, air, warmth, cold, water, moisture, food, etc., and which they transmit by heredity, are the primary elements in the production of the manifold variety of the organic world, and in the origin of species. ”

“ The theory divides itself into two parts—the production of organic life from the inorganic world; and the progressive development of the several species from the first simple elementary forms of life. ”

“ We see innumerable sub-divisions of animals and plants, but we see no other such great subdivision of organic life as that whereby it ranges itself, for the most part readily, as either animal or vegetable. ”

“ Well, I think the sensible answer is that all vegetation is developed from seeds, spores, or whatever was designed to continue the chain of being from one plant to another. For the life of me I can't see how mere organic or inorganic matter can produce life. It can only sustain and nourish the life which exists in it or is placed in it, and which by a law of nature develops when the conditions are favorable. ”

“ Our bodily structure in the large or whole, as necessary to an understanding of the general conditions in man's physical life and as fundamental to instruction in health. The more important native and foreign animals and plants; their growth and life, together with their importance in nature's economy. The natural forces which have greatest significance for organic life and for man's efficiency. ”

“ Were matter and force intelligible to us, the world would not cease to be so, even though we should conceive the earth to be covered with the most luxuriant growth of vegetable life, from its emerald equatorial girdle to the last lichen-gray cliffs of the pole; and it would remain equally so, whatever share in the formation of the vegetable world we might concede to the laws of organic development, or to natural selection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By what kind of logic, then, is it inferrible that organic life was initiated after a manner like that in which Infusoria are said to be now spontaneously generated? Where, before life commenced, were the superior organisms from which these lowest organisms obtained their organic matter? ”

“ 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. ”

“ "Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
(p. 027) First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume; 300
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing. ”

“ Organisms that could feed on inorganic matter assumed a stationary character and became the ancestors of the plants. Creatures that required organic food developed powers of locomotion to facilitate the search for sustenance, and of these were born the varied forms of earth’s animal population. From the first microscopic plants, vegetable life proceeded to seaweed, to mosses, to ferns, to the pine and the yew, to the vines, the fruit-bearing and flowering plants that crowd the forests and beautify the gardens of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To account for adaptation, for the almost perfect fitness of every plant and every animal to its position in life, for the existence (in other words) of definitely correlated parts and organs, we must call in the aid of survival of the fittest. Without that potent selective agent, our conception of the becoming of life is a mere chaos ”

“ That which is true in the vegetable is true in the animal world, as regards the pre-established order which regulates and controls the phenomena of life. These laws which govern the development of organic phenomena being immutable and everlasting, permit the different generations which succeed each other on our globe to build upon a durable basis, which certifies to the slow and laborious, but irresistible march of human progress. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of this, fitness of environment is quite as essential a component as the fitness which arises in the process of organic evolution; and in fundamental characteristics the actual environment is the fittest possible abode of life.” Such is the thesis which this work seeks to establish through discussions of the physical and chemical characteristics of life and cosmogony, and through critical study of the properties of matter in their biological relations. ”

“ In the same manner we may say of the plant when compared with the animal, that though the plant be in one view formed in order to live, yet even when developed it strives only after a progressive organic formation and real development as the highest aim of its life; whilst, on the other hand, the whole end of the activity of animal life is not mere organic formation, but also free self-determination and ideal development. ”

“ Moreover, those structural modifications of the adult organism which, under change of climate, change of occupation, change of food, bring about some re-arrangement in the organic balance, may similarly be regarded as progressive or continuous adjustments of internal relations to external relations. So that not only does the definition, as thus expressed, comprehend all those activities, bodily and mental, which constitute our ordinary idea of Life ”

“ Besides thus tracing a qualitative correlation between these two great orders of organic activity, as well as between both of them and inorganic agencies, we may rudely trace a quantitative correlation. Where vegetal life is abundant, we usually find abundant animal life; and as we advance from torrid to temperate and frigid climates, the two decrease together. ”

“ We see at once, from the above, why it is that plants cannot feed on elements, viz., because their food must be decomposed in order to create the organic matter out of which all organisms are built. This elevation of matter, which takes place in the green leaves of plants, is the starting-point of life; upon it alone is based the possibility of the existence of the organic kingdom. The running down of the matter there raised determines the vital phenomena of germination, of pale plants, and even of some of the vital phenomena of green plants, and all the vital phenomena of the animal kingdom. ”

“ To understand rightly the daily accumulating stores of organic reliquiæ, requires more than a slight knowledge of existing nature,—more even than an acquaintance with animal and vegetable forms. The philosophy of their existence must be considered—the variations of their structure, with respiration in air or in water—life in fresh or salt water—in trees or on the ground—carnivorous or herbivorous food—their geographical distribution dependence—on climate and atmospheric conditions. ”

“ Of the party above referred to as not satisfied with this conception described by Professor Huxley, there were two classes. The great majority were admirers of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation—a work which, while it sought to show that organic evolution has taken place, contended that the cause of organic evolution, is “an impulse” supernaturally “imparted to the forms of life, advancing them, ... through grades of organization.” ”

“ If in closing these observations, intended to show the progressive development of animal life out of the life of the lower kingdoms of nature, we look to the changes which animal life operates upon them, facts present themselves worthy of the most serious consideration. We have seen how the vegetative life is nourished by inorganic life, and how vegetation in its turn operates changes in many ways upon the surface of the earth, and even on the atmosphere. ”

“ Life is therefore present not only in organic nature, but in all nature which is characterized by the union of the general energetic subsistence with the special additional subsistence of an animal and vegetable nature. ”

“ Just as among primitive organisms there were some that turned towards animal life by re [Pg 131] fusing to manufacture organic out of inorganic material and taking organic substances ready made from organisms that had turned toward the vegetative life, so, among the animal species themselves, many contrived to live at the expense of other animals. ”

“ Such is however the condition of mortality, that the first law of nature is, "Eat or be eaten." We cannot long exist without the destruction of other animal or vegetable beings, either in their mature or their embryon state. Unless the fruits, which surround the seeds of some vegetables, or the honey stolen from them by the bee, may be said to be an exception to this assertion. See Botanic Garden, P. I. Cant. I. l. 278. Note. Hence, from the necessity of our nature, we may be supposed to have a right to kill those creatures, which we want to eat, or which want to eat us. ”

“ It seems pretty clear that organic beings must be exposed during several generations to the new conditions of life to cause any appreciable amount of variation; and that when the organisation has once begun to vary, it generally continues to vary for many generations. ”

“ Let it also be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life; and consequently what infinitely varied diversities of structure might be of use to each being under changing conditions of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have gradually traced down all organic forms, or, in other words, we have analyzed the present condition of animated nature, until we found that each species took its origin in a form similar to that under which all the others commence their existence. We have found the whole of the vast array of living forms, with which we are surrounded, constantly growing, increasing, decaying and disappearing; the animal constantly attracting, modifying, and applying to its sustenance the matter of the vegetable kingdom, which derived its support from the absorption and conversion of inorganic matter. ”

“ And they shall be eaten—and their eaters eaten; and thus the organic world, which grew up by this devouring process from the smallest plant to man, slowly drops back by form after form through the lower world of animals and plants, until every grain of vitality is sucked out of it, and it falls at last, utterly juiceless and lifeless, into the mineral world from which it came. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The operation of the manifold forces of nature, the attempts of each organism to utihse the environment according to its own needs, and the modification of its organs through the assimilation of the surrounding substances—all contribute their quota to its special growth and development. The life and individuality of each single organism are controlled and influenced by the sum-total of all those processes and products of Nature that arise out of the needs of every other organism for growth and development. ”

“ Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. ”