Was Man Created? Part 1

Was Man Created?

by Henry A. Mott.

PREFACE.

This work was originally written to be delivered as a lecture; but as its pages continued to multiply, it was suggested to the author by numerous friends that it ought to be published in book-form; this, at last, the author concluded to do. This work, therefore, does not claim to be an exhaustive discussion of the various departments of which it treats; but rather it has been the aim of the author to present the more interesting observations in each department in as concise a form as possible. The author has endeavored to give credit in every instance where he has taken advantage of the labors of others. This work is not intended for that cla.s.s of people who are so absolutely certain of the truth of their religion and of the immortality that it teaches, that they have become unqualified to entertain or even perceive of any scientific objection; for such people may be likened unto those who, "_Seeing, they see, but will not perceive; and hearing, they hear, but will not understand._"

This work is written for the man of culture who is seeking for truth--believing, as does the author, that all truth is G.o.d's truth, and therefore it becomes the duty of every scientific man to accept it; knowing, however, that it will surely modify the popular creeds and methods of interpretation, its final result can only be to the glory of G.o.d and to the establishment of a more exalted and purer religion. All facts are truths; it consequently follows that all scientific facts are truths--there is no half-way house--a statement is either a truth or it is not a truth, according to the _law of non-contradiction_. If, therefore, we find tabulated amongst scientific facts (or truths) a statement which is not a fact, it is not science; but all statements which are facts it naturally follows are truths, and as such must be accepted, no matter how repulsive they may at first seem to some of our poetical imaginings and pet theories. We cannot help but sympathize with the feelings which prompted President Barnard to write the following lines, still we will see he was too hasty: "Much as I love truth in the abstract," he says, "I love my hope of immortality more." * * * He maintained that it is better to close one's eyes to the evidences than to be convinced of the _truth_ of certain doctrines which _he regards_ as subversive of the fundamentals of Christian faith. "If this (is all) is the best that science can give me, then I pray no more science. Let me live on in my simple ignorance, as my fathers lived before me; and when I shall at length be summoned to my final repose, let me still be able to fold the drapery of my couch about me, and lie down to pleasant, even though they be deceitful, dreams."[1] The limitations to the acceptance of truth that President Barnard makes is wrong; for, as Professor Winch.e.l.l has said, "we think it is a higher aspiration to wish to know 'the truth and the whole truth.' At the same time, we have not the slightest apprehension that the whole truth can ever dissipate our faith in a future life."[2] Let us "Prove all things and hold fast unto that which is good," recognizing the fact that "the truth-seeker is the only G.o.d-seeker."

AUTHOR JANUARY 25, 1880.

WHAT SCIENCE CAN ANSWER.

"The object of science is not to find out what we like or what we dislike--the object of science is Truth." In the discussion of the subject, "_Was Man Created?_" our object will be--not to study the many ways G.o.d might have created him, but the way he actually did create him, for all ways would be alike easy to an Omnipotent Being.

Let us look at man and ask the question: What is there about him which would need an independent act of creation any more than about the "mountain of granite or the atom of sand"? The answer comes back: Besides life, man has many mental attributes. Let us direct our attention at first to the grand phenomena of life, and then to man's attributes.

To discover the nature of life, to find out what life really is, it would be folly to commence by comparing man, the perfection of living beings, with an inorganic or inanimate substance like a brick, to discover the hidden secret; for, as Professor Orton says:[3] "That only is essential to life which is common to all forms of life. Our brains, stomach, livers, hands and feet are luxuries. They are necessary to make us human, but not living beings." Instead of man, then, it will be necessary for us to take the simplest being which possesses such a phenomena; and such are the little h.o.m.ogeneous specks of protoplasm, const.i.tuting the Group _Monera_, which are entirely dest.i.tute of structure, and to which the name "Cytode" has been given. In the fresh waters in the neighborhood of Jena minute lumps of protoplasm were discovered by Haeckel, which, on being examined under the most powerful lens of a microscope, were seen to have no constant form, their outlines being in a state of perpetual change, caused by the protrusion from various parts of their surface of broad lobes and thick finger-like projections, which, after remaining visible for a time, would be withdrawn, to make their appearance again on some other part of the surface. To this little ma.s.s of protoplasm Haeckel has given the name _Protanaeba primitiva_. These little lumps multiply by spontaneous division into two pieces, which, on becoming dependent, increase in size and acquire all the characteristics of the parent. From this ill.u.s.tration, it will be seen that "reproduction is a form of nutrition and a growth of the individual to a size beyond that belonging to it as an individual, so that a part is thus elevated into a (new) whole."

It is to this simple state of the monera the _fertilized_ egg of any animal is transformed--the germ vesicle; the original egg kernel disappears, and the parent kernel (cytococcus) forms itself anew; and it is in this condition, a non-nucleated ball of protoplasm, a true cytod, a h.o.m.ogeneous, structureless body, without different const.i.tuent parts, that the human child, as well as all other living beings, take their first steps in development. No matter how wonderful this may seem, the fact stares us in the face that the entire human child, as well as every animal with all their great future possibilities, are in their first stage a small ball of this complex h.o.m.ogeneous substance. Whether we consider "a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle which finds s.p.a.ce and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly, and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the gigantic pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circ.u.mference," or we look "at the other half of the world of life, picturing to ourselves the great finner whale, hugest of beasts that live or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among the waves in which the stoutest s.h.i.+p that ever left dock-yard would founder hopelessly, and contrast him with the invisible animalcule, mere gelatinous specks, mult.i.tudes of which could in fact dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the schoolman could in imagination;--with these images before our minds, it would be strange if we did not ask what community of form or structure is there between the fungus and the fig-tree, the animalcule and the whale? and, _a fortiori_, between all four? Notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity--namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition--does pervade the whole living world."[4] And this unit is Protoplasm. So we see it is necessary for us to retreat to our protoplasm as a naked formless plasma, if we would find freed from all non-essential complications the agent to which has been a.s.signed the duty of building up structure and of transforming the energy of lifeless matter into the living. Even Goethe (in 1807) almost stated this when he said: "Plants and animals, regarded in their most imperfect condition, are hardly distinguishable. This much, however, we may say, that from a condition in which plant is hardly to be distinguished from animal, creatures have appeared, gradually perfecting themselves in two opposite directions--the plant is finally glorified into the tree, enduring and motionless; the animal into the human being of the highest mobility and freedom."

Let us examine for a moment this substance Protoplasm, and see in what way it differs from inorganic matter, or in what way the animate differs from the inanimate--the living from the dead.

Felix Dujardin, a French zoologist (1835) pointed out that the only living substance in the body of rhizopods and other inferior primitive animals, is identical with protoplasm. He called it _sarcode_. Hugo von Mohl (1846) first applied the name protoplasm to the peculiar serus and mobile substance in the interior of vegetable cells; and he perceived its high importance, but was very far from understanding its significance in relation to all organisms. Not, however, until Ferdinand Cohn (1850) and more fully Franz Unger (1855) had established the ident.i.ty of the animate and contractile protoplasm in vegetable cells and the sarcode of the lower animals, could Max Shultz in 1856-61 elaborate the protoplasm theory of the sarcode so as to proclaim protoplasm to be the most essential and important const.i.tuent of all organic cells, and to show that the bag or husk of the cell, the cellular membrane and intercellular substance, are but secondary parts of the cell, and are frequently wanting. In a similar manner Lionel Beale (1862) gave to protoplasm, including the cellular germ, the name of "germinal matter," and to all the other substance entering into the composition of tissue, being secondary, and produced the name of "formed matter."

"Wherever there is life there is protoplasm; wherever there is protoplasm, there, too, is life." The physical consistence of protoplasm varies with the amount of water with which it is combined, from the solid form in which we find it in the dormant state to the thin watery state in which it occurs in the leaves of valisneria.

As to its composition, chemistry can as yet give but scanty information; it can tell that it is composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus, and it can also tell the percentage of each element, but it cannot give more than a formula that will express it as a whole, giving no information as to the nature of the numerous alb.u.minoid substances which compose it. Edward Cope, in his article on Comparative Anatomy,[5] gives the formula for protoplasm (as a whole), C{24}H{17}N{3}O{8} + S and P, in small quant.i.ties under some circ.u.mstances.

It is therefore, he says, a nitryl of cellulose: C{24}H{20}O{2} + 3NH{3}.

According to Mulder the composition of alb.u.men, one of the cla.s.s of protein substances to which protoplasm belongs, is 10(C{40}H{31}N{5}O{12}) + S{2}P. Protoplasm is identical in both the animal and vegetable kingdom; it behaves the same from whatever source it may be derived towards several re-agents, as also electricity. Is it possible, then, that the protoplasm which produces the mould is exactly the same composition as that which produces the human child? The answer is YES, so far as the elements are concerned, but the proportions of carbon, hydrogen, etc., must enter into an infinite number of diverse stratifications and combination in the production of the various forms of life. Professor Frankland, speaking of protein, for instance, says it is capable of existing under probably at least a thousand isomeric forms. Protoplasm may be distinguished under the microscope from other members of the cla.s.s to which it belongs, on account of the faculty it possesses of combining with certain coloring matters, as carmine and aniline; it is colored dark-red or yellowish-brown by iodine and nitric acid, and it is coagulated by alcohol and mineral acids as well as by heat. It possesses the quality of absorbing water in various quant.i.ties, which renders it sometimes extremely soft and nearly liquid, and sometimes hard and firm like leather. Its prominent physical properties are excitability and contractility, which Kuhne and others have especially investigated. The motion of protoplasm in plants was first made known by Bonaventure Corti a century ago in the Charoe plants; but this important fact was forgotten, and it had to be discovered by Trevira.n.u.s in 1807. The regular motion of the protoplasm, forming a perfect current, may be seen in the hairs of the nettle, and weighty evidence exists that similar currents occur in all young vegetable cells. "If such be the case," says Huxley, "the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing, and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in innumerable myriads of living cells, which const.i.tute each tree, we should be stunned as with a roar of a great city."

One step higher in the scale of life than the monera is the vegetable or animal cell, which arose out of the monera by the important process of segregation in their h.o.m.ogeneous viscid bodies, the differentiation of an inner kernel from the surrounding plasma. By this means the great progress from a simple cytod (without kernel) into a real cell (with kernel) was accomplished. Some of these cells at an early stage encased themselves by secreting a hardened membrane; they formed the first vegetable cells, while others remaining naked developed into the first aggregate of animal cells. The vegetable cell has usually two concentric coverings--cell-wall and primordial utricle. In animal cells the former is wanting, the membrane representing the utricle. As a general fact, also, animal cells are smaller than vegetable cells. Their size[6]

varies greatly, but are generally invisible to the naked eye, ranging from 1/500 to 1/10000 of an inch in diameter. About four thousand of the smallest would be required to cover the dot put over the letter i in writing. The shape of cells varies greatly; the normal form, though, is spheroidal as in the cells of fat, but they often become[7]

many-sided--sometimes flattened as in the cuticle, and sometimes elongated into a simple filament as in fibrous tissue or muscular fibre.

The cell, therefore, is extremely interesting, since all animal and vegetable structure is but the multiplication of the cell as a unit, and the whole life of the plant or animal is that of the cells which compose them, and in them or by them all its vital processes are carried on. It may sound paradoxical to speak of an animal or plant being composed of millions of cells; but beyond the momentary shock of the paradox no harm is done.

The cell, then, can be regarded as the basis of our physiological idea of the elementary organism; but in the animal as well as in the plant, neither cell-wall nor nucleus is an essential const.i.tuent of the cell, inasmuch as bodies which are unquestionably the equivalents of cells--true morphological units--may be mere ma.s.ses of protoplasm, devoid alike of cell-wall or nucleus. For the whole living world, then, the primary and a mental form of life is merely an individual ma.s.s of protoplasm in which no further structure is discernible. Well, then, has protoplasm been called the "universal concomitant of every phenomena of life." Life is inseparable from this substance, but is dormant unless excited by some external stimulant, such as heat, light, electricity, food, water, and oxygen.

Although we have seen that the life of the plant as well as of the animal is protoplasm, and that the protoplasm of the plant and that of the animal bear the closest resemblance, yet plants can manufacture protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence in the end depend on plants. "Without plants," says Professor Orton, "animals would perish; without animals, plants had no need to be." The food of a plant is a matter whose energy is all expended--is a fallen weight. But the plant organism receives it, exposes it to the sun's rays, and in a way mysterious to us converts the actual energy of the sunlight into potential energy within it. It is for this reason that life has been termed "bottled-suns.h.i.+ne."

The princ.i.p.al food of the plant consists of carbon united with oxygen to form carbonic acid, hydrogen united with oxygen to form water, and nitrogen united with hydrogen to form ammonia. These elements thus united, which in themselves are perfectly lifeless, the plant is able to convert into living protoplasm. "Plants are," says Huxley, "the acc.u.mulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse."

Boussengault found long since that peas sown in pure sand, moistened with distilled water and fed by the air, obtained all the carbon necessary for their development, flowering, and fructification. Here we see a plant which not only maintains its vigor on these few substances, but grows until it has increased a millionfold or a million-millionfold the quant.i.ty of protoplasm it originally possessed, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. This and other proof led M. Dumas to say: "From the loftiest point of view, and in connection with the physics of the globe, it would be imperative on us to say that in so far as their truly organic elements are concerned, plants and animals are the offspring of the air."

Schleiden,[8] speaking of the haymakers of Switzerland and the Tyrol, says: "He mows his definite amount of gra.s.s every year on the Alps, inaccessible to cattle, and gives not back the smallest quant.i.ty of organic substance to the soil. Whence comes the hay, if not from the atmosphere."

It has been seen, then, that plants can manufacture protoplasm, a faculty which animals are not possessed of; they at best can only convert dead protoplasm into living protoplasm. Thus when vegetable or meat is cooked their protoplasm dies, but is not rendered incompetent of resuming its old functions as a matter of life. "If I," says Huxley, "should eat a piece of cooked mutton, which was once the living protoplasm of a sheep, the protoplasm, rendered dead by cooking, will be changed into living protoplasm, and thus I would transubstantiate sheep into man; and were I to return to my own place by sea and undergo s.h.i.+pwreck, the crustacean might and probably would return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster." As has been said before, where there are life manifestations there is protoplasm. Life is regarded by one cla.s.s of thinkers as the principle or cause of organization; and according to the other, life is the product or effect of organization. We must, however, agree with Professor Orton, who says: "Life is the effect of organization, not the result of it. Animals do not live because they are organized, but are organized because they are alive." In whatever way it is looked at, life is but a forced condition. "The more advanced thinkers, then, in science to-day," says Barker, "therefore look upon the life of the living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe that the former is purely phenomenal and only a manifestation of the latter. During the existence of a special force as such, they retain the term only to express the sum of the phenomena of living beings. The word life must be regarded, then, as only a generalized expression signifying the sum-total of the properties of matter possessing such organization."

In what manner, then, does this matter, possessing the phenomena of life, differ from inorganic matter, or in what manner does living matter differ from matter not living? The forces which are at work on the one side are at work on the other. The phenomena of life are all dependent upon the working of the same physical and chemical forces as those which are active in the rest of the world. It may be convenient to use the terms "vitality" and "vital force" to denote the cause of certain groups of natural operations, as we employ the names of "electricity"

and "electrical force" to denote others; but it ceases to do so, if such a name implies the absurd a.s.sumption that either "electricity" or "vitality" is an ent.i.ty, playing the part of a sufficient cause of electrical or vital phenomena. A ma.s.s of living protoplasm is simply a machine of great complexity, the total result of the work of which, or its vital phenomena, depend on the one hand upon its construction, and on the other upon the energy supplied to it; and to speak of "vitality"

as anything but the names of a series of operations is as if one should talk of the "horologity" of a clock.[9]

When hydrogen and oxygen are united by an electrical spark water is produced; certainly there is no parity between the liquid produced and the two gases. At 32 F., oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to fly away from one another; water at the same temperature is a strong though brittle solid. Such changes are called the properties of water. It is not a.s.sumed that a certain something called "acquosity" has entered into and taken possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as formed, and then guarded the particles in the facets of the crystal or amongst the leaflets of the h.o.a.r-frost.

On the contrary, it is hoped molecular physics will in time explain the phenomena. "What better philosophical status," says Huxley,[10] "has vitality than acquosity. If the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules."

"To distinguish the living from the dead body," Herbert Spencer says, "the tree that puts out leaves when the spring brings change of temperature, the flower which opens and closes with the rising and setting of the sun, the plant that droops when the soil is dry and re-erects itself when watered, are considered alive because of these produced changes; in common with the zoophyte, which contracts on the pa.s.sing of a cloud over the sun, the worm that comes to the ground when continually shaken, and the hedgehog which rolls itself up when attacked."

"Seeds of wheat produced antecedent to the Pharaohs," says Bastain,[11]

"remaining in Egyptian catacombs through century after century display of course no vital manifestations, but nevertheless retain the potentiality of growing into perfect plants whenever they may be brought into contact with suitable external conditions. We must presume that either (1) during this long lapse of centuries the 'vital principle' of the plant has been imprisoned in the most dreary and impenetrable of dungeons, whither no sister effluence from the general 'soul of nature'

could affect it; or else (2) that the germ of the future living plant is there only in the form of an inherited structure, whose molecular complexities are of such a kind that, after moisture has restored mobility to its atoms, its potential life may pa.s.s into actual life.

Some of the lowest forms of animals and plants have such a tenacity to life that their vital manifestation may be kept in abeyance for five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years. Though not living any more than the wheat, they also retain the potentiality of manifestation of life; and for each alike, in order that this potentiality may pa.s.s into actuality, the first requisition is water with which to restore them to that possibility of molecular rearrangement under the influence of incident forces, of which the absence of water had deprived them, and without which, life in any real sense is impossible."

a.n.a.lYSIS OF A MAN.

(BY PROF. MILLER.)

A man 5 feet 8 inches high, weighing 154 pounds.

lbs. oz. grs.

Oxygen 111 0 0 Hydrogen 14 0 0 Carbon 21 0 0 Nitrogen 3 10 0

Inorganic elements in the ash:

Phosphorus 1 2 88 Calcium 2 0 0 Sulphur 0 0 219 Chlorine 0 2 47

1 ounce = 437 grains.

Sodium 0 2 116 Iron 0 0 100 Pota.s.sium 0 0 290 Magnesium 0 0 12 Silica 0 0 2

Total 154 0 0

The quant.i.ty of the substances found in a human body weighing 154 pounds:

lbs. oz. grs.

Water 111 0 0 Gelatin 15 0 0 Alb.u.men 4 3 0 Fibrine 4 4 0 Fat 12 0 0 Ashes 7 9 0

Total 154 0 0

(From the "CHEMISTS' MANUAL.")