Organic world

“ 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. ”

“ That a certain amount of influence is exerted by the environment on the course of the processes of development of the organic world, will however be acceded to by the defenders of the phyletic vital force. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All nature seems to turn to this new principle. "The elements of the inorganic world are subserving the purposes of organic life." The Creator has bound them to organic life. Every plant selects its food from the elements of earth by a chemistry of its own. The atmosphere around us is no less to the vegetable kingdom than a great pasture field. Every leaf is feasting, and every fiber is touched by the light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence the action of man upon the organic world tends to derange its original balances, and while it reduces the numbers of some species, or even extirpates them altogether, it multiplies other forms of animal and vegetable life.
The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves an enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface otherwise adapted to his occupation. ”

“ Animals, on the other hand, are dependent for their food-supply on organic material—that is, on either plant or animal substances; and since they cannot live by taking in each other’s washing—in other words, by eating each other—it follows that the animal world is dependent on the plant world for its continued existence. ”

“ It is the organic world together, to be sure, that is able to subsist on the fourteen elements as these are given by the earth, the animal kingdom obtaining most of its material at second hand, as elaborated by the vegetable. ”

“ It is an interesting and not hitherto sufficiently noticed fact, that the domestication of the organic world, so far as it has yet been achieved, belongs, not indeed to the savage state, but to the earliest dawn of civilization, the conquest of inorganic nature almost as exclusively to the most advanced stages of artificial culture. ”

“ They become conjoined, numerically and morphologically, in progressive grades of complexity, originating by one kind of alliance the chemical elements which constitute the organic world, and by another the vital elements, which form the protoplasmic basis of animal and plant life. [1053] The organic kingdom rests upon the inorganic, and preys upon it, evolving 285 itself throughout endless time into more highly differentiated forms by its incessant appetite for material acquisition and sensuous stimulation in its environment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the shape of food the outer world supplies the organism with all the materials necessary for the building up of the constantly wasting organic structures; and, in the shape of heat, there comes from the outer world that other element necessary for structural changes, development and growth—the element of force. But the task of directing all the outward materials to the development and maintenance of the organism—in other words, the task of the director-general of the organic economy falls to the protoplasm. ”

“ It is an ascent of matter from the lowermost grade of an inert substance, through the intermediate grades of vegetative and animal life, up to the culminating and ultimate term of material perfection, in the partial constitution of a human nature and personality, in the concurrence as a coagent in vegetative and sensile functions, and in the indirect participation, as instrument, in the higher psychic functions of rational thought and volition.
At the present time, the inorganic world is clearly the exclusive source of all the matter found in living beings. ”

“ It may be said, therefore, that on these expanded membranes Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of Nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole organic world; ”

“ Darwin's views aside, the whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will. ”

“ At one moment they exist as inorganic combinations in the air or the soil, [342] then as portions of plants, then as portions of animals, then they return to the air or soil again to renew their cycle of movement. The metamorphoses feigned by the poets of antiquity have hence a foundation in fact, and the vegetable and animal, the organic and inorganic worlds are indissolubly bound together. Plants are reducing, animals oxydizing, machines. Plants form, animals destroy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Organic being, as such, is the final term to which the generalization must be carried before the true scope of organic evolution can be adequately grasped by the mind. Individuals perish and are decomposed; species become extinct; genera, families, and whole classes, are swept from the earth. The broadest divisions into which the organic kingdoms of Nature have been classified have each their periods of ascendency and decline. But organic evolution ever continues. Progress in organization is the constant result. ”

“ The earth is now covered with vegetable life, but there must have existed a time when “darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and organization had not yet commenced tracing its lovely net-work of cells upon the bare surface of the ocean-buried rock. At length the mystery of organic creation began: into this science dares not penetrate, but it is privileged to begin its search a little beyond this point, and we are enabled to trace the progress of organic development through a chain of interesting results which are constantly recurring. ”

“ 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 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.” ”

“ The cutting down and washing of the [Pg 28] lands, the draining and filling of depressions, the flooding of the lands, the destruction (or succession) of plant and animal associations (including crop rotation) , are processes brought about or practiced by other organisms or animal agencies. An ecological standpoint gives us a consistent, comprehensive orientation of all these natural and “artificial” activities and processes, and shows the unity in all organic responses to the environment. Man’s influence in the main consists of hastening or retarding “natural processes.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ On contemplating the facts from this point of view, we become aware that, besides those special effects of the co-operating forces which eventuate in the longer survival of one individual than of others, and in the consequent increase through generations, of some trait which furthered its survival, many other effects are being wrought on each and all of the individuals. Bodies of every class and quality, inorganic as well as organic, are from instant to instant subject to the influences in their environments ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It seems, indeed, to be a law of Nature that the ultimate destiny of organic matter is to 'circulate,' and that if it does not do so quietly, as in the ordinary processes of nutrition in plants and animals, it [130] merely bides its time, and ultimately attains its end with more or less destructive violence. ”

“ It is, on the contrary, a mere fiction, a device for assisting our comprehension of complex action and reaction. Not only does the action of the environment alter the organism, the action of the organism also alters the environment; or, to put it more plainly, the state of organism and environment at any moment is the result of the interaction of preceding states of organism and environment. Material combinations, whether organic or inorganic, when fitted to their environment, survive; those best fitted, where perfect fitness does not exist, thrive best ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Organic nature is indisputably one and indivisible. It has been developed throughout by means of the fundamental forces of life, of growth and reproduction, and the equally fundamental laws of variation, heredity, and enormous increase, resulting in a perpetual adaptation in form, structure, colour, and habits to the slowly changing environment. These forces and laws are universal in their action; they are demonstrably adequate to the production of the whole of the phenomena we are now discussing. ”

“ 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. ”