Organicism

“ 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 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. ”

“ Something was said of the scheme of Nature, or evolution, in the organic world. This, on closer inspection, proves to be distinct from function or the simple preservation and continuation of life. The latter involves growth and multiplication, but not change. Evolution, on the contrary, depends wholly upon change, and this involves a new principle, viz., activity or effort. It is through individual effort that the organism is molded to the environment, and this organic modification is what constitutes those perfectionments of structure that result in progressive development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the contrary, there is the best evidence to show that since the first dawn of life in the occurrence of the simplest organisms, until the meridian splendour of life as now we see it, gradual advance from the general to the special—from the low to the high, from the few and simple to the many and complex—has been the law of organic nature. And of course it is needless to say that this is precisely the law to which the process of descent with adaptive modification would of necessity give rise. ”

“ Before taking the step—or making the leap, if you like—it will be best, then, to go back a bit, and, passing the line of organic evolution in review, run over the fundamental principles of biology.
Organic evolution is characterized by countless variations, according to which the manifold forms of life can be classified under more or less definite categories—kingdoms, sub-kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera, species and varieties, with many intermediate divisions—and arranged in an ascending series culminating, as we view it, in man. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The environment must contain complementary conditions of function in order that the individual may even come into existence and survive at all. The great question is, then, how much is to be allowed for original tendency in primal organisms and how much is to be reckoned to the account of the action of the environment in the course of evolution. Even if we go back beyond the organic, assuming a development of the organic from the inorganic, we must come, in the last analysis, to irresolvable elements whose motion, as distinct and particular action and reaction, must have definite form. ”

“ Though these words do not suggest a very definite idea, yet they indicate the belief that organic progress is a result of some in-dwelling tendency to develop, supernaturally impressed on living matter at the outset—some ever-acting constructive force which, independently of other forces, moulds organisms into higher and higher forms.
In whatever way it is formulated, or by whatever language it is obscured, this ascription of organic evolution to some aptitude naturally possessed by organisms, or miraculously imposed on them, is unphilosophical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Organical form, again, is innate; it unfolds itself from within, and acquires its determination contemporaneously with the perfect development of the germ. We everywhere discover such forms in nature throughout the whole range of living powers, from the crystallization of salts and minerals to plants and flowers, and from these again to the human body. In the fine arts, as well as in the domain of nature,—the supreme artist,—all genuine forms are organical, that is, determined by the qual [Pg 36] ity of the work. ”

“ Still it is none the less true that in individual development, as in racial evolution, the organic takes the lead. What is intelligently acquired is something added to that which has been engrained, through natural selection or otherwise, as a potentiality of the germinal substance. What we have first to note, then, is that organic evolution provides ready-grouped data to consciousness. ”

“ The very men who most insisted that specific difference was the accumulation of differences so minute as to be often hardly, if at all, perceptible, could not see that the striking and baffling phenomena of design in connection with organism admitted of exactly the same solution as the riddle of organic development, and should be seen not as a result reached per saltum, but as an accumulation of small steps or leaps in a given direction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ By this means the plant is brought into direct connexion with the relevant spiritual energy, and then left to carry out for itself the necessary process of materialization, instead of being forced by mere chemical additions to the soil first to potentize the substance itself.8
The same principle holds good for man and beast. They also need 'young material' for their nourishment, so that the type active in them - which in animals is the group-soul of the species and in man is the single individual - can express its true form and character. ”

“ The opposition to which I have referred is: that whereas one class of thinkers regard the observed advance from the crystalline through the vegetable and animal worlds as an unbroken process of natural growth, thus grasping the world, inorganic and organic, as one vast and indissolubly connected whole, the other class suppose that the passage from the inorganic to the organic required a distinct creative act, and that to produce the different forms, both in the world of fossils and in the world of living things, creative acts were also needed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I declare organic modification to be mainly due to function, and hence in the closest correlation with mental change, I must give plants, as well as animals, a mind, and endow them with power to reflect and reason upon all that most concerns them. Many who will feel little difficulty about admitting that animal modification is upon the whole mainly due to the secular cunning of the animals themselves will yet hesitate before they admit that plants also can have a reason and cunning of their own. ”

“ And now, having observed how, under its most general aspects, the hypothesis of organic evolution commends itself to us by its derivation, by its coherence, by its analogies, by its direct evidence, by its implications ”

“ But he must be a half-hearted philosopher who, believing in that possibility, and having watched the gigantic strides of the biological sciences during the last twenty years, doubts that science will sooner or later make this further step, so as to become possessed of the law of evolution of organic forms—of the unvarying order of that great chain of causes and effects of which all organic forms, ancient and modern, are the links. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic life upon the globe—and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar theatres of vital being—is, that the simplest and most primitive type, under a law to which that of like-production is subordinate, gave birth to the type next above it, that this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases very small—namely, from one species only to another ”

“ No explanation of such a kind could possibly be satisfying. And more and more it is becoming clear that even what we call the inorganic world is as subtle and swift in its responses as what we call the organic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”