Life and Matter Part 6

Both the above theses are false; yet Free Will and Determinism are both true, and in a completely known universe would cease to be contradictories.

The reconciliation between opposing views lies in realising that the Universe of which we have a kind of knowledge is but a portion or an aspect of the whole.

We are free, and we are controlled. We are free, in so far as our sensible surroundings and immediate environment are concerned; that is, we are free for all practical purposes, and can choose between alternatives as they present themselves. We are controlled, as being intrinsic parts of an entire cosmos suffused with law and order.

No scheme of science based on knowledge of our environment can confidently predict our actions, nor the actions of any sufficiently intelligent live creature. For "mind" and "will" have their roots on the other side of the part.i.tion, and that which we perceive of them is but a fraction of the whole. Nevertheless, the more developed and consistent and harmonious our character becomes, the less liable is it to random outbreaks, and the more certainly can we be depended on. We thus, even now, can exhibit some approximation to the highest state--that conscious unison with the entire scheme of existence which is identical with perfect freedom.

If we could grasp the totality of things we should realise that everything was ordered and definite, linked up with everything else in a chain of causation, and that nothing was capricious and uncertain and uncontrolled. The totality of things is, however, and must remain, beyond our grasp; hence the actual working of the process, the nature of the links, the causes which create our determinations, are frequently unknown. And since it is necessary for practical purposes to treat what is utterly beyond our ken as if it were non-existent, it becomes easily possible to fall into the erroneous habit of conceiving the transcendental region to be completely inoperative.

CHAPTER X

FURTHER SPECULATION AS TO THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE[6]

_Preliminary Remarks on Recent Views in Chemistry._

It is a fact extremely familiar to chemists that the groupings possible to atoms of carbon are exceptionally numerous and complicated, each carbon atom having the power of linking itself with others to an extraordinary extent, so that it is no exceptional thing to find a substance which contains twenty or thirty atoms of carbon as well as other elements linked together in its molecule in a perfectly definite way, the molecule being still cla.s.sifiable as that of a definite chemical compound. But there are also some non-elementary bodies which, although they are chemically complete and satisfied, retain a considerable vestige of power to link their molecules together so as to make a complex and ma.s.sive compound molecule; and these are able not only to link similar molecules into a more or less indefinite chain, but to unite and include the saturated molecules of many other substances also into the unwieldy aggregate.

[6] An article reprinted from the _North American Review_ for May 1905.

Of the non-elementary bodies possessing this property, _water_ appears to be one of the chief; for there is evidence to show that the ordinary H-2-O molecule of water, although it may be properly spoken of as a saturated or satisfied compound, seldom exists in the simple isolated shape depicted by this formula, but rather that a great number of such simple molecules attach themselves to each other by what is called their residual or outstanding affinity, and build themselves up into a complex aggregate.

The doctrine of residual affinity has been long advocated by Armstrong; and the present writer has recently shown that it is a necessary consequence of the electrical theory of chemical affinity,[7] and that the structure of the resulting groupings, or compound aggregates, may be partially studied by means of floating magnets, somewhat after the manner of Alfred Mayer.[8]

[7] See _Nature_, vol. 70, p. 176, June 23, 1904.

[8] See an article on "Modern Views of Chemical Affinity" by the present writer in a magazine called _Technics_, for September 1904.

It may be well here to explain to students that one of the lines of argument which lead to the conclusion that the water molecule, as it ordinarily exists, is really complex and ma.s.sive, is based upon measurements of the Faraday dielectric constant for water; for this constant, or "specific inductive capacity," is found to be very large, something like 50 times that of air or free ether; whereas for gla.s.s it is only 5 or 6 times that of free s.p.a.ce. The dielectric constant of a substance generally increases with the density or ma.s.siveness of its molecule,--indeed, the value of this constant is one of the methods whereby matter displays its interaction with and loading of the free ether of s.p.a.ce,--and any such density as the conventional nine times that of hydrogen for the molecule of water would be wholly unable to explain its immense dielectric constant.

The influence of the ma.s.siveness of a water molecule is also displayed in its power of tearing asunder or dissociating any salts or other simple chemical substance introduced into it; common salt, for instance, is found always to have a certain percentage of its molecules knocked or torn asunder directly it is dissolved in water, so that, in addition to a number of salt molecules in solution, there are a few positively charged sodium atoms and a few negatively charged chlorine atoms, existing in a state of loose attraction to the water aggregate, and amenable to the smallest electric force; which, when applied, urges the chlorine one way and the sodium the other way, so that they can be removed at an electrode and their place supplied by freshly dissociated molecules of salt, thus bringing about its permanent electro-chemical decomposition, and enabling the water to behave as an electrolytic conductor directly a little salt or acid is dissolved in it.

The power of the water molecule to a.s.sociate itself with molecules of other substances is ill.u.s.trated by the well-known fact that water is an almost universal solvent. It is its residual affinity which enables it to enter into weak chemical combination with a large number of other substances, and thus to dissolve those substances. The dissolving power usually increases when the temperature is raised, possibly because the self-contained or self-sufficient groupings of the water molecules are then to some extent broken up and the fragments enabled to cling on to the foreign or introduced matter instead of only to each other. The foreign substance is apt to be extruded again when the liquid cools, and when the affinity of the water-aggregates for each other resumes its sway. Very hot water can dissolve not only the substances familiarly known to be soluble in water, but it can dissolve things like gla.s.s also; so that gla.s.s vessels are unable to retain water kept under high pressure at a very high temperature, approaching a red heat.

Another material which also seems to have the power of combining with a number of other bodies, under the influence of the loose mode of chemical combination spoken of as residual affinity, is carbon; so that a block of charcoal can absorb hundreds of times its own bulk of certain gases.

Indeed, Sir James Dewar has recently employed this absorbing power of very cold carbon to produce a perfect kind of vacuum, which may, perhaps, be the nearest approach to absolute vacuum that has yet been attained: probably higher than can be attained by any kind of mechanical or mercury pump.

_Unexpected Influence of Size._

Suppose now a substance contains a great number of carbon molecules and a great number of water molecules, each of which has this residual affinity or power of clinging together well developed, what may be expected to be the result? Surely, the formation of a molecule consisting of thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms, const.i.tuting substances more complex even than those already known to or a.n.a.lysable by organic chemistry; and if these complex molecules likewise possess the adhesive faculty, a grouping of millions or even billions of atoms may ultimately be formed. (A billion, that is a million millions, of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting aggregate is still excessively minute. A portion of substance consisting of a billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times bigger still.) Such a grouping is likely to have properties differing not only in degree but in kind from the properties of simple substances.

For it must not be thought that aggregation only produces quant.i.tative change and leaves quality unaltered. Fresh qualities altogether are liable to be introduced or to make their appearance at certain stages--certain critical stages--in the building up of a complex ma.s.s (_cf._ p. 71).

The habitability of a house, for instance, depends on its possessing a cavity of a certain size; there is a critical size of brick-aggregate which enables it to serve as a dwelling. Nothing much smaller than this would do at all. The aggregate retains this property, thus conferred upon it by size, however big it may be made after that; until it becomes a palace or a cathedral, when it may perhaps reach an upper limit of size at which it would be crushed by its own weight, or at which the span of roof is too great to be supported. But the difference, as regards habitability, between a palace and a hovel is far less than that between a hovel and one of the air-holes in a brick or loaf, or any other cavity too small to act as a human habitation.

The difference as regards habitability is then an infinite difference.

To take a less trivial instance; a planet which is large enough to retain an atmosphere by its gravitative attraction differs utterly, in potentiality and importance, from the numerous lumps of matter scattered throughout s.p.a.ce, which, though they may be as large as a haystack or a mountain or as the British Isles, or even Europe, are yet too small to hold any trace of air to their surface, and therefore cannot in any intelligible sense of the word be regarded as habitable.

One of the lumps of matter in s.p.a.ce can become a habitable planet only when it has attained a certain size, which conceivably it might do by falling together with others into a complex aggregate under the influence of gravitative attraction. The asteroids have not succeeded in doing this, but the planets have; and, accordingly, one of them, at any rate, has become a habitable world.

But observe that the great size and the consequent retention of an atmosphere did not generate the inhabitants; it satisfied one of the conditions necessary for their existence. How they arose is another matter. All that we have seen so far is that an aggregate of bodies may possess properties and powers which the separate bodies themselves possess in no kind or sort of way. It is not a question of degree, but of kind.

So also, further, if the aggregate is large enough, very much larger than any planet, as large as a million earths aggregated together, it acquires the property of conspicuous radio-activity, it becomes a self-heating and self-luminous body, able to keep the ether violently agitated in all s.p.a.ce round it, and thus to supply the radiation necessary for protecting the habitable worlds from the cold of s.p.a.ce to which they are exposed, for maintaining them at a temperature appropriate to organic existence, and likewise for supplying and generating the energy for their myriad activities. It has become in fact a central sun, and source of heat, solely because of its enormous size combined with the fact of the mutual gravitative attraction of its own const.i.tuent particles. No body of moderate size could perform this function, nor act as a perennial furnace to the rest.

_Application to Protoplasm._

Very well then, return now to our complex molecular aggregate, and ask what new property, beyond the province of ordinary chemistry and physics, is to be expected of a compound which contains millions or billions of atoms attached to each other in no rigid, stable, frigid manner, but by loose unstable links, enabling them constantly to re-arrange themselves and to be the theatre of perpetual change, aggregating and reaggregating in various ways and manifesting ceaseless activities. Such unstable aggregates of matter may, like the water of a pond or a heap of organic refuse, serve as the vehicle for influences wholly novel and unexpected.

Too much agitation--that is, too high a temperature--will split them up and destroy the new-found potentiality of such aggregates; too little agitation--that is, too low a temperature--will permit them to begin to cohere and settle down into frozen rigid ma.s.ses insusceptible of manifold activities. But take them just at the right temperature, when sufficiently complex and sufficiently mobile; take care of them, so to speak, for the structure may easily be killed; and what shall we find?

We could not infer or guess what would be the result, but we can observe the result as it is.

The result is that the complexes group themselves into minute ma.s.ses visible in the microscope, each ma.s.s being called by us a "cell"; that these cells possess the power of uniting with or a.s.similating other cells, or fragments of cells, as they drift by and come into contact with them; and that they absorb into their own substance such portions as may be suitable, while the insufficiently elaborated portions--the grains of inorganic or over-simple material--are presently extruded.

They thus begin the act of "feeding."

Another remarkable property also can be observed; for a cell which thus grows by feeding need not remain as one individual, but may split into two, or into more than two, which may cohere for a time, but will ultimately separate and continue existence on their own account. Thus begins the act of "reproduction."

But a still more remarkable property can be observed in some of the cells, though not in all; they can not only a.s.similate a fragment of matter which comes into contact with them, but they can sense it, apparently, while not yet in contact, and can protrude portions of their substance or move their whole bodies towards the fragment, thus beginning the act of "hunting"; and the incipient locomotory power can be extended till light and air and moisture and many other things can be sought and moved towards, until locomotion becomes so free that it sometimes seems apparently objectless--mere restlessness, change for the sake of change, like that of human beings.

The power of locomotion is liable, however, to introduce the cell to new dangers, and to conditions hostile to its continued aggregate existence. So, in addition to the sense of food and other desirable things ahead, it seems to acquire, at any rate when still further aggregated and more developed, a sense of shrinking from and avoidance of the hostile and the dangerous,--a sense as it were of "pain."

And so it enters on its long career of progress, always liable to disintegration or "death"; it begins to differentiate portions of itself for the feeding process, other portions for the reproductive process, other portions again for sensory processes, but retaining the protective sense of pain almost everywhere; until the spots sensitive to ethereal and aerial vibrations--which, arriving as they do from a distance, carry with them so much valuable information, and when duly appreciated render possible perception and prediction as to what is ahead--until these sensitive spots have become developed into the special organs which we now know as the "eye" and the "ear." Then, presently, the power of communication is slowly elaborated, speech and education begin, and the knowledge of the individual is no longer limited to his own experience, but expands till it embraces the past history and the condensed acquisition of the race. And thus gradually arises a developed self-consciousness, a discrimination between the self and the external world, and a realisation of the power of choice and freedom,--a stage beyond which we have not travelled as yet, but a stage at which almost all things seem possible.

The first two properties, a.s.similation and reproduction, overshadowed by the possibility of _death_, are properties of life of every kind, plant life as of all other. The power of locomotion and special senses, over-shadowed by the sense of _pain_, are the sign of a still further development into what we call "animal life." The further development, of mind, consciousness, and sense of freedom, overshadowed by the possibility of wilful error or _sin_, is the conspicuous attribute of life which is distinctively human.

Thus, our complex molecular aggregate has shown itself capable of extraordinary and most interesting processes, has proved capable of const.i.tuting the material vehicle of life, the natural basis of living organisms, and even of mind; very much as a planet of certain size proved capable of possessing an atmosphere.

But is it to be supposed that the complex aggregate _generated_ the life and mind, as the planet generated its atmosphere? That is the so-called materialistic view, but to the writer it seems an erroneous one, and it is certainly one that is not proven. It is not even certain that every planet generated all the gases of its own atmosphere: some of them it may have swept up in its excursion through s.p.a.ce. What is certain is that it possesses the power of retaining an atmosphere; it is by no means so certain how all the const.i.tuents of that atmosphere arrived.

_Questions concerning the Origin and Nature of Life._

All that we have actually experienced and verified is that a complex molecular aggregate is capable of being the vehicle or material basis of life; but to the question _what life is_ we have as yet no answer.

Many have been the attempts to generate life _de novo_, by packing together suitable materials and keeping them pleasantly warm for a long time; but, if all germs of pre-existing life are rigorously excluded, the attempt hitherto has been a failure: so far, no life has made its appearance under observation, except from antecedent life.

But, to exclude all trace of antecedent life, it is necessary not only to shut out floating germs, but to kill all germs previously existing in the material we are dealing with. This killing of previous life is usually accomplished by heat; but it has been argued that strong heat will destroy not only the life but the potentiality for life, will break up the complex aggregate on which life depends, will deprive the incubating solution not only of life but of livelihood. There is some force in the objection, and it is an ill.u.s.tration of the difficulty surrounding the subject. But Tyndall showed that antecedent life could be destroyed, without any very high temperature, by gentle heat periodically applied: heat insufficient to kill the germs, but sufficient to kill the hatched or developed organisms. Periodic heating enables the germs of successive ages to hatch, so to speak, and the product to be slain; and, although some each time may have reproduced germs before slaughter--eggs capable of standing the warmth--yet a succession of such warmings would ultimately be fatal to all, and that without necessarily breaking up the protoplasmic complex aggregates on the existence of which the whole vital potentiality depends.

So far, however, all effort at spontaneous generation has been a failure; possibly because some essential ingredient or condition was omitted, possibly because great lapse of time was necessary. But suppose it was successful; what then? We should then be reproducing in the laboratory a process that must at some past age have occurred on the earth; for at one time the earth was certainly hot and molten and inorganic, whereas now it swarms with life.

Does that show that the earth generated the life? By no means; no more than it need necessarily have generated all the gases of its atmosphere, or the meteoric dust which lies upon its snows.

Life may be something not only ultra-terrestrial, but even immaterial, something outside our present categories of matter and energy; as real as they are, but different, and utilising them for its own purpose.

What is certain is that life possesses the power of vitalising the complex material aggregates which exist on this planet, and of utilising their energies for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the animated material body moves about and strives after many objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a certain individuality, a certain character. It may realise _itself_, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit. Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns upon the nascent soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth, goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent value, as a work of art or of literature; it may enter regions of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may soar till it is almost divine.

Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas? There are some who try to think that it is. There are others who recognise in this extraordinary development a contact between this material frame of things and a universe higher and other than anything known to our senses; a universe not dominated by Physics and Chemistry, but utilising the interactions of matter for its own purposes; a universe where the human spirit is more at home than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a universe capable of infinite development, of n.o.ble contemplation, and of lofty joy, long after this planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled its present spire of destiny, and retired cold and lifeless upon its endless way.