Origin of life

“ It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter. ”

“ Then what is the testimony of students and searchers as to the mode in which life takes its origin to-day? Does life originate in life? or do we find that in our laboratories, and in the observed processes of nature now, the not-living can be, without the intervention of living things, changed into that which lives? ”

“ While assuming that it is the nature of life to evolve, he admits that there is no evidence accessible to the senses or discerned as yet by the most delicate instruments for the existence of these countless beginnings of life. The real question then concerns not this kind of life, which eye hath not seen, but the origin of the life which we know, and whose marvellous development evolution traces. ”

“ The object of the fifth book is to explain the formation of our system—of earth, sea, sky, sun, and moon,—the origin of life upon the earth, and the advance of human nature from a savage state to the arts and usages of civilisation. ”

“ My curiosity was awakened as to what was the origin of human life in its first appearance upon the earth, and of vegetable life as well, and also the cause of the existence of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. ”

“ Throughout the whole middle decades of the present age, the human mind in all its highest embodiments was eagerly searching, groping, and enquiring after a naturalistic explanation of the origin and progress of organic life. ”

“ I must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of the other mental qualities of animals within the same class. ”

“ Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture. You may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; ”

“ I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. ”

“ Impress'd on Nature by the Great First Cause,
Say, Muse! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
How Love and Sympathy with potent charm
Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,
And bind Society in golden chains. ”

“ Thus, then, Nature, through the whole geological history of the earth, was gestative mother of spirit, which, after its long embryonic development, came to birth and independent life and immortality in man. ”

“ Truly do we carry in us, each human of us alive on the planet to-day, the incorruptible history of life from life’s beginning. This history is written in our tissues and our bones, in our functions and our organs, in our brain cells and in our spirits, and in all sorts of physical and psychic atavistic urgencies and compulsions. ”

“ It has been said by a Master that if we could see with the eye of the Spirit the generation of the human being, his ante-natal life, we should understand the generation of worlds, the generation of universes. ”

“ Human nature is full of delightful surprises like this. Biological History, or, if one may use the term, Animal Archæology, was the passion of this man's life whom Nature had designed to be a leader in the world of affairs; the science of all others most remote from the affairs of men and the practice of life. ”

“ Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult—at least I found it so—than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. ”

“ Thou hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, and in the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose of health. "Thou hast given thy beloved sleep"—a sleep that wraps in happy dreams the throbbing nerves of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence of man—preserver of life and love. Thou art the teacher of every virtue, and the enemy of every vice. Thou has discovered the true basis of morals—the origin and office of conscience—and hast revealed the nature and measure of obligation. ”

“ The natural world, plants, animals, the human race, institutions, science, art, religion, all animate individual beings, man as an individual, have their history of development, which suggests its lesson.
Nature is aspiration. From chaos to the world of this geologic age, from protoplasm to man, from savagery to civilization, from ignorance to culture, from symbolism to developed art, from egoism to altruism, from germ to fruit, from infancy to maturity, from realization to higher realization, has been the process. ”

“ But habits and instincts are as strongly inherited as structure, so that, as it appears to me, the study of life is, even from the orthodox scientific point of view, as important as the study of death. ”

“ The History of Life written upon the rocky frame-work of this gray and hoary old world, declares that man’s physical being is but the result of the laws of evolution. He did not spring into being, like the sea-born Venus, a creature of physical grace, and strength, and beauty ”

“ Everything indicates that we, the occupants of this earth in the historic period of the human race are living at a time when life conditions are in their ascending stage, and that our teeming world is, as it were, rejoicing in the morning of creation. The forces of evolution are in full play, and therefore, while dismissing the idea of purpose, we may legitimately inquire what are the tendencies of evolution. ”

“ This is the whole history of man, the whole history of nature, the whole history of life.
Every evolution is preceded by an involution. The whole of the tree is present in the seed, its cause. The whole of the human being is present in that one protoplasm. The whole of this universe is present in the cosmic fine universe. Everything is present in its cause, in its fine form. ”

“ When we think of the evolution of the world and all that is therein—of a universal process of Becoming—we recognise that at an uncertain time the earth was framed, that living organisms appeared by and by, that by and by some of these exhibited mental as well as bodily life, and that finally man emerged, a rational and social person. ”

“ Here the problems of mind and body, of their genetic and metaphysical relations to each other, and of the ultimate relation of the spirit world to each, press for solution before there can be any full and final answer to the question of the origin of man. Is it any wonder that the single occurrence upon which was based the birth of all future generations which have peopled the earth should be thought [Pg 80] to involve more than can be included in any scientific hypothesis? ”

“ As he has advanced through the countless ages since God breathed into him the breath of Life, and by leading him along the lines of physical development to a station in creation where the physical evolution gave place to the ever-growing psychical development ”

“ Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have produced man and human existence. ”

“ If you would understand the philosophy of Mental and Spiritual Creation, Generation, and Re-generation, you must understand and study this Hermetic Principle. It contains the solution of many mysteries of Life. ”

“ Thus have we endeavoured to pre-figure the whole Earthly Life of Man by a comprehension of its purpose;—to perceive why our Race had to begin its Existence here, and by this means to describe the whole present Life of humankind:—this is what we wished to do,—it was our first task. ”

“ But my opinions will be best explained by a rapid exemplification in the processes of Nature, from the first rudiments of individualized life in the lowest classes of its two great poles, the vegetable and animal creation, to its crown and consummation in the human body; thus illustrating at once the unceasing polarity of life, as the form of its process, and its tendency to progressive individuation as the law of its direction. ”

“ Sunrise and sunset, seedtime and harvest, life, death, and the hereafter are some of the mysteries which have always puzzled the human mind. The primitive races, knowing nothing of science, looked upon the forces of nature as gigantic personalities, or gods, who controlled human destiny. ”

“ My object is to seek for the principles and causes of mental evolution in man, first as regards the origin of human faculty, and next as regards the several main branches into which faculties distinctively human afterwards ramified and developed. ”

“ Now let me show you an origin of man, with his intellect and consciousness, which will entirely overthrow the idea that he was a special creation in the sense to which you seem to be drifting, namely, that of miraculous interposition by a being called God. You must be aware, as you have read so much, that modern science has made great discoveries, and that there are certain conclusions on this subject which are drawn from very numerous and important data. ”

“ But whether noble or ignoble, this instinct for mating is, in its simplest terms, only a provision of nature that all life contains within itself the means of renewing life. Without this, life, so far as we know it, would end with the present generation. ”

“ Whether this difference of the fortunes of Naturalism and of Supernaturalism is an indication of the progress, or of the regress, of humanity; of a fall from, or an advance towards, the higher life; is a matter of opinion. ”

“ Here, I say, and in these discourses only, shall this be so; for, strictly speaking, and in the higher flights of speculation, Human Life on Earth, and Earthly Time itself, are but necessary Epochs of the One Time and of the One Eternal Life;—and this Earthly Life with all its subordinate divisions may be deduced from the fundamental Idea of the Eternal Life already accessible to us here below. ”

“ Because the thing he revered in nature, the spirit, the universal, the life that was God, had created at his birth or before his birth the three tremendous instincts of nature—to fight for life, to feed himself, to reproduce his kind. ”

“ And it should be clear to the reader that given these elemental facts of life, given growth and death and reproduction with individual variation in a world that changes, life must change in this way, modification and differentiation must occur, old species must disappear, and new ones appear. ”

“ To them this question may be put: "Can you mention any form of life that merely 'is,' without doing anything?"
Taken separately and physically, we are animals, genus homo; taken socially and psychically, we are, in varying degree, human; and our real history lies in the development of this human-ness. ”

“ I am now to account to you for the origin of the human mind, upon the same hypothesis, namely, that man is a development from some previous and lower organism. I acknowledge that what we call mind, or intellect, has to be accounted for; and that we who hold the evolution theory of the origin of man as an animal must be able to suggest how his intellect became developed by the operation of the same natural causes which produced his physical organization. ”

“ When we have taken the first step in trying to solve the problem of man's origin, where can we stop? Can we find any point in his history where we can say, Here his natural history ends, and his supernatural history begins? ”

“ Of the latest chapters in the story of science, one has retold the origin of Christianity, divested it of miracle and revelation, and translated it into purely natural and human terms. Another chapter has fixed the general trend of the universe known to man as an ever advancing and broadening movement, under the name of Evolution. ”

“ And still more surely can we refer to it those progressive manifestations of Life in the vegetable, the animal, and man—which we may classify as unconscious, conscious, and intellectual life,—and which probably depend upon different degrees of spiritual influx. ”

“ It may be said that, so far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods of life,—sensation,—instinct,—the intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason,—and lastly the improvable reason of Man himself, presents us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter. ”

“ Thus it is learned that matter is a manifestation of mortal mind, and that matter always surrenders its claim, when the perfect and eternal Mind appears.
Naturalists describe the origin of mortal and material existence in the various forms of embryology, and Embryology. accompany their descriptions with important observations, which should awaken thought to a higher and purer contemplation of man's origin. This consciousness must precede an understanding of the harmony of Being. ”

“ If, as we have every reason to believe upon either hypothesis of man's origin, he is a completed animal, standing by original creation or by the effect of the evolution process at the head of the whole animal [Pg 160] kingdom in the apparent purpose of his existence, his agency and his power in promoting the sum of happiness on earth, for himself and all the other animals, are the same upon either hypothesis of his origin. ”

“ The human period began—the period of a fellow-worker with God, created in God's own image. The animal existences of the previous ages formed, if I may so express myself, mere figures in the landscapes of the great garden which they inhabited. ”