Omphalos Part 6

II. I demand also, in opposition to the development hypothesis, the perpetuity of specific characters, from the moment when the respective creatures were called into being, till they cease to be. I a.s.sume that each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was, and distinguished it from everything else, however near or like. I a.s.sume that such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which distinguish species from species _now_, were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now, and are as distinct now as they were then. If any choose to maintain, as many do, that species were gradually brought to their present maturity from humbler forms,--whether by the force of appetency in individuals, or by progressive development in generations--he is welcome to his hypothesis, but I have nothing to do with it. These pages will not touch him.

I believe, however, there is a large preponderance of the men of science,[52] at least in this country, who will be at one with me here.

They acknowledge the almighty _fiat_ of G.o.d, as the energy which produced being; and they maintain that the specific character which He then stamped on his organic creation remains unchangeable.

VI.

LAWS.

"----[Greek: ton trochon tes geneseos]."--JAMES iii. 6.

The course of nature is a circle. I do not mean the _plan_ of nature; I am not speaking of a circular arrangement of species, genera, families, and cla.s.ses, as maintained by MacLeay, Swainson, and others. Their theories may be true, or they may be false; I decide nothing concerning them; I am not alluding to any _plan_ of nature, but to its _course_, _cursus_,--the way in which it _runs on_. This is a circle.

Here is in my garden a scarlet runner. It is a slender twining stem some three feet long, beset with leaves, with a growing bud at one end, and with the other inserted in the earth. What was it a month ago? A tiny shoot protruding from between two thick fleshy leaves scarcely raised above the ground. A month before that? The thick fleshy leaves were two oval cotyledons, closely appressed face to face, with the minute plumule between them, the whole enclosed in an unbroken, tightly-fitting, spotted, leathery coat. It was a bean, a seed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMINATION OF A SCARLET RUNNER.

_a._ The ripe bean, showing the hilum at *; _b._ The same bean, with one cotyledon removed, to show the plumule.

_c._ A similar bean, twenty-four hours after planting.

_d._ The same, on the sixth day after planting.

_e._ The same, on the twelfth day.

_f._ The same, on the fourteenth day.

N.B. From _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, the front cotyledon has been cut away, to show the progress of the plumule.]

Was this the commencement of its existence? O no! Six months earlier still it was snugly lying, with several others like itself, in a green fleshy pod, to the interior of which it was organically attached. A month before that, this same pod with its contents was the centre of a scarlet b.u.t.terfly-like flower, the bottom of its pistil, within which, if you had split it open, you would have discerned the tiny beans, whose history we are tracing backwards, each imbedded in the soft green tissue, but no bigger than the eye of a cambric needle.

But where was this flower? It was one of many that glowed on my garden wall all through last summer; each cl.u.s.ter springing as a bud from a slender twining stem, which was the exact counterpart of that with which we commenced this little life-history.

And this earlier stem,--what of it? It too had been a shoot, a pair of cotyledons with a plumule, a seed, an integral part of a carpel, which was a part of an earlier flower, that expanded from an earlier bud, that grew out of an earlier stem, that had been a still earlier seed, that had been--and backward, _ad infinitum_, for aught that I can perceive.

The course, then, of a scarlet runner is a circle, without beginning or end:--that is, I mean, without a natural, a normal beginning or end. For at what point of its history can you put your finger, and say, "Here is the commencement of this organism, before which there is a blank; here it began to exist?" There is no such point; no stage which does not look back to a previous stage, on which _this_ stage is inevitably and absolutely dependent.

To some of my readers this may be rendered more clear by the accompanying diagram:----

[Ill.u.s.tration: legume--reed--cotyledons--shoot--stem--bud--flower--carpel]

[Ill.u.s.tration: theca--spore--prothallus--sporal frond--tuft--caudex--fertile frond--sorus]

See that magnificent tuft of Lady-fern on yonder bank, arching its exquisitely cut fronds so elegantly on every side. A few years ago this ample crown was but a single small frond, which you would probably not have recognised as that of a Lady-fern. Somewhat earlier than this, the plant was a minute flat green expansion (_prothallus_), of no definite outline, very much like a Liverwort. This had been previously a three-sided spore lying on the damp earth, whither it had been jerked by the rupture of a capsule (_theca_). For this spore, though so small as to be visible only by microscopic aid, had a previous history, which may be traced without difficulty. It was generated with hundreds more, in one of many capsules, which, were crowded together, beneath the oval bit of membrane, that covered one of the brown spots (_sori_), which were developed in the under surface of the fronds of an earlier Lady-fern.

That earlier individual had in turn pa.s.sed through the same stages of sporal frond, prothallus, spore, theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, spore, theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, &c.--_ad infinitum_.

This sounding-winged Hawkmoth, which like a gigantic bee is buzzing around the jasmine in the deepening twilight, hovering ever and anon to probe the starry flowers that make the evening air almost palpable with fragrance,--this moth, what "story of a life" can he tell? Nearly a year of existence he has spent as a helpless, almost motionless pupa, buried in the soft earth, from whence he has emerged but this evening. About a twelvemonth ago he was a great fat green caterpillar with an arching horn over his rump, working ever harder and harder at devouring poplar leaves, and growing ever fatter and fatter. But before that he had one day burst forth a little wriggling worm, from a globular egg glued to a leaf. Whence came the egg? It was developed within the ovary of a parent Hawkmoth, whose history is but an endless rotation of the same stages,--pupa, larva, egg, moth, pupa, larva, &c. &c.

[Ill.u.s.tration: larva--pupa--moth--egg]

Behold this specimen of _Plumularia_, a shrub-like zoophyte, comprising within its populous branches some twenty thousand polypes. Every individual cell, now inhabited by its tentacled Hydra, has in its turn budded out from a branch, which was itself but a lateral process from the central axis. And this was but the prolongation of what was at first a single cell, shooting up from a creeping root-thread. A little earlier than this, there was neither cell nor root-thread, but the organism existed in the form of a _planule_, a minute soft-bodied, pear-shaped worm, covered with cilia, that crawled slowly over the stones and sea-weeds. Whence came it? A few hours before, it had emerged from the mouth of a vase-like cell, one of the ovarian capsules, which studded the stem of an old well-peopled Plumularia-shrub, and which had been gradually developed from its substance by a process a.n.a.logous to budding. And then if we follow the history of this earlier shrub backward, it will only lead us through exactly correspondent stages, primal cell, planule, ovarian capsule, stem, and so on interminably.

[Ill.u.s.tration: primal cell--axis--branch--polype--capsule--planule]

Once more. The cow that peacefully ruminates under the grateful shadow of yonder spreading beech, was, a year or two ago, a gamesome heifer with budding horns. The year before, she was a bleating calf, which again had been a breathless foetus wrapped up in the womb of its mother. Earlier still it had been an unformed embryo; and yet earlier, an embryonic vesicle, a microscopically minute cell, formed out of one of the component cells of a still earlier structure,--the germinal vesicle of a fecundated ovum. But this ovum, which is the remotest point to which we can trace the history of our cow as an individual, was, before it a.s.sumed a distinct individuality, an undistinguishable const.i.tuent of a viscus,--the ovary,--of another cow, an essential part of _her_ structure, a portion of the tissues of _her_ body, to be traced back, therefore, through all the stages which I have enumerated above, to the tissues of another parent cow, thence to those of a former, and so on, through a vista of receding cows, as long as you choose to follow it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: embryo--foetus--calf--heifer--cow--ovum--germ.

vesicle--embr. vesicle]

This, then, is the order of all organic nature. When once we are in any portion of the course, we find ourselves running in a circular groove, as endless as the course of a blind horse in a mill. It is evident that there is no one point in the history of any single creature, which is a legitimate beginning of existence. And this is not the law of some particular species, but of all: it pervades all cla.s.ses of animals, all cla.s.ses of plants, from the queenly palm down to the protococcus, from the monad up to man: the life of every organic being is whirling in a ceaseless circle, to which one knows not how to a.s.sign any commencement,--I will not say any certain or even probable, but any _possible_, commencement. The cow is as inevitable a sequence of the embryo, as the embryo is of the cow. Looking only at nature, or looking at it only with the lights of experience and reason, I see not how it is possible to avoid one of these two theories, the development of all organic existence out of gaseous elements, or the eternity of matter in its present forms.

Creation, however, solves the dilemma. I have, in my postulates, begged the fact of creation, and I shall not, therefore, attempt to prove it.

Creation, the sovereign fiat of Almighty Power, gives us the commencing point, which we in vain seek in nature. But what is creation? It is _the sudden bursting into a circle_. Since there is no one stage in the course of existence, which, more than any other affords a natural commencing point, whatever stage is selected by the arbitrary will of G.o.d, must be an unnatural, or rather a preter-natural, commencing point.

The life-history of every organism commenced at some point or other of its circular course. It was created, called into being, in some definite stage. Possibly, various creatures differed in this respect; perhaps some began existence in one stage of development, some in another; but every separate organism had a distinct point at which it began to live.

Before that point there was nothing; this particular organism had till then no existence; its history presents an absolute blank; _it was not_.

But the whole organisation of the creature thus newly called into existence, looks back to the course of an endless circle in the past.

Its whole structure displays a series of developments, which as distinctly witness to former conditions as do those which are presented in the cow, the b.u.t.terfly, and the fern, of the present day. But what former conditions? The conditions thus witnessed unto, as being necessarily implied in the present organisation, were non-existent; the history was a perfect blank till the moment of creation. The past conditions or stages of existence in question, can indeed be as triumphantly inferred by legitimate deduction from the present, as can those of our cow or b.u.t.terfly; they rest on the very same evidences; they are identically the same in every respect, except in this one, that they were _unreal_. They exist only in their results; they are effects which never had causes.

Perhaps it may help to clear my argument if I divide the past developments of organic life, which are necessarily, or at least legitimately, inferrible from present phenomena, into two categories, separated by the violent act of creation. Those unreal developments whose apparent results are seen in the organism at the moment of its creation, I will call _prochronic_, because time was not an element in them; while those which have subsisted since creation, and which have had actual existence, I will distinguish as _diachronic_, as occurring during time.

Now, again I repeat, there is no imaginable difference to sense between the prochronic and the diachronic development. Every argument by which the physiologist can prove to demonstration that yonder cow was once a foetus in the uterus of its dam, will apply with exactly the same power to show that the newly created cow was an embryo, some years before its creation.

Look again at the diagram by which I have represented the life-history of this animal. The only mode in which it can begin is by a sudden sovereign act of power, an irruption into the circle. You may choose _where_ the irruption shall occur; there must be a bursting-in at some point. Suppose it is at "calf;" or suppose it is at "embr. vesicle." Put a wafer at the point you choose, say the latter. This then is the real, actual commencement of a circle, to be henceforth ceaseless. But the embryonic vesicle necessarily implies a germinal vesicle, and this necessitates an ovum, and the ovum necessitates an ovary, and the ovary necessitates an entire animal,--and thus we have got a quarter round the circle in back development; we are irresistibly carried along the prochronic stages,--the stages of existence which were before existence commenced,--as if they had been diachronic, actually occurring within our personal experience.

If I know, as a _historic fact_, that the circle was commenced where I have put my wafer, I may begin it there; but there is, and can be, nothing in the _phenomena_ to indicate a commencement there, any more than anywhere else, or, indeed, anywhere at all. The commencement, as a fact, I must learn from testimony; I have no means whatever of inferring it from phenomena.

Permit me, therefore, to repeat, as having been proved, these two propositions:--

ALL ORGANIC NATURE MOVES IN A CIRCLE.

Creation is a violent irruption into the circle of nature.

VII.

PARALLELS AND PRECEDENTS.

(_Plants._)

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

declare, if thou hast understanding."--JOB x.x.xviii. 4.