Life and Matter Part 4

"I therefore consider Psychology a branch of natural science--a section of physiology.... We shall give to the material basis of all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of psychoplasm" (p. 32).

_Life and Energy._

The one and only point on which I think it worth while to express decided dissidence is to be found in the paragraph where Mr M'Cabe makes a statement concerning what he calls "vital force,"--a term I do not remember to have ever used in my life. He claims for Haeckel what is represented by the following extracts from his article (pp. 745, 6, 7):--

"He does not say that life is 'knocked out of existence' when the material organism decays. He says that the vital energy no longer exists _as such_, but is resolved into the inorganic energies a.s.sociated with the gases and relics of the decaying body. Thus the matter looks a little different when Sir Oliver comes to 'challenge him to say by what right he gives that answer.' He gives it on this plain right, that _science always finds these inorganic energies to reappear on the dissolution of life_, and has never in a single instance found the slightest reason to suspect (if we make an exception for the moment of psychical research) that the vital force as such has continued to exist."

The italics are mine. A little further on he continues:--

"There is no serious scientific demur to Haeckel's a.s.sumption of a monism of the physical world, and his identification of vital force with ordinary physical and chemical forces.

"Sir Oliver seems to admit, indeed, that the vital force is not in its nature distinct from physical force, but holds that it needs 'guidance.'"

"On all sides we hear the echo of Professor Le Conte's words: 'Vital force may now be regarded as so much force withdrawn from the general fund of chemical and physical forces.'"

Very well then, here is no conflict on a matter of opinion or philosophic speculation, but divergence on a downright question of scientific fact (let it be noted that I do not wish to hold Professor Haeckel responsible for these utterances of his disciple: he must surely know better), and I wish to oppose the fallacy in the strongest terms.

If it were true that vital energy turned into or was anyhow convertible into inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body had more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that "these inorganic energies" always or ever "reappear on the dissolution of life," then undoubtedly _cadit quaestio_; life would immediately be proved to be a form of energy, and would enter into the scheme of physics. But inasmuch as all this is untrue--the direct contrary of the truth--I maintain that life is _not_ a form of energy, that it is _not_ included in our present physical categories, that its explanation is still to seek. And I have further stated--though there I do not dogmatise--that it appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence, which interacts with this material frame of things, and, while there, exerts guidance and control on the energy which already here exists (_cf._ p.

24); for, though they alter the quant.i.ty of energy no whit, and though they merely utilise available energy like any other machine, live things are able to direct inorganic terrestrial energy along new and special paths, so as to achieve results which without such living agency could not have occurred--_e.g._ forests, ant-hills, birds'

nests, Forth bridge, sonatas, cathedrals.

I have never taught, nor for a moment thought, that "vital force is akin to physical force, but that it needs guidance" (p. 747); the phrase sounds to me nonsense. I perceive, not as a theory, but as a fact, that life is _itself_ a guiding principle, a controlling agency, _i.e._ that a live animal or plant can and does guide or influence the elements of inorganic nature. The fact of an organism possessing life enables it to build up material particles into many notable forms--oak, eagle, man,--which material aggregates last until they are abandoned by the guiding principle, when they more or less speedily fall into decay, or become resolved into their elements, until utilised by a fresh incarnation; and hence I say that whatever life is or is not, it is certainly this: it is a guiding and controlling ent.i.ty which interacts with our world according to laws so partially known that we have to say they are practically unknown, and therefore appear in some respects mysterious. If it be thought that I mean by this something superst.i.tious, and for ever inexplicable or unintelligible, I have no such meaning. I believe in the ultimate intelligibility of the universe, though our present brains may require considerable improvement before we can grasp the deepest things by their aid; but this matter of "vitality" is probably not hopelessly beyond us; and it does not follow, because we have no theory of life or death now, that we shall be equally ignorant a century hence.

My chief objection to Professor Haeckel's literary work is that he is dogmatic on such points as these, and would have people believe, what doubtless he believes himself, that he already knows the answer to a number of questions in the realms of physical nature and of philosophy.

He writes in so forcible and positive and determined a fas.h.i.+on, from the vantage ground of scientific knowledge, that he exerts an undue influence on the uncultured among his readers, and causes them to fancy that only benighted fools or credulous dupes can really disagree with the historical criticisms, the speculative opinions, and philosophical, or perhaps unphilosophical, conjectures, thus powerfully set forth.

CHAPTER VIII

HYPOTHESIS AND a.n.a.lOGIES CONCERNING LIFE

The view concerning Life which I have endeavoured to express is that it is neither matter nor energy, nor even a function of matter or of energy, but is something belonging to a different category; that by some means at present unknown it is able to interact with the material world for a time, but that it can also exist in some sense independently; although in that condition of existence it is by no means apprehensible by our senses. It is dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but otherwise, I conceive that it is independent, that its essential existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state.

It may be well to indicate what I mean by conceiving of the possibility that life has an existence apart from its material manifestations as we know them at present. (Remember note on p. 40.) It is easy to imagine that such a view is a mere surmise, having no intelligible meaning, and that it is merely an attempt to clutch at human immortality in an emotional and unscientific spirit. To this, however, I in no way plead guilty. My ideas about life may be quite wrong, but they are as cold-blooded and free from bias as possible; moreover, they apply not to human life alone, but to all life--to that of all animals, and even of plants; and they are held by me as a working hypothesis, the only one which enables me to fit the known facts of ordinary vitality into a thinkable scheme. Without it, I should be met by all the usual puzzles:--(1) as to the stage at which existence begins, if it can be thought of as "beginning" at all;[3] (2) as to the nature of individuality, in the midst of diversity of particles, and the determination of form irrespective of variety of food; (3) the extraordinary rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century.

[3] I doubt whether _existence_ can be "begun" at all, save as the result of a juxtaposition of elements, or of a conveyance of motion. We can put things together, and we can set things in motion,--statics and kinetics,--can we do more? Ether can be strained, matter can be moved: I doubt whether we see more than this happening in the whole material universe. This dictum is elaborated elsewhere.

With it, I cannot pretend that all these things are thoroughly intelligible, but the lines on which an explanation may be forthcoming seem to be laid down:--the notion being that what we see is a temporary apparition or incarnation of a permanent ent.i.ty or idea.

It is easiest to explain my meaning by aid of a.n.a.logues,--by the construction, as it were, of "models," just as is the custom in Physics whenever a recondite idea has to be grasped before it can be properly formulated and before a theory is complete.

I will take two a.n.a.logies: one from Magnetism and one from Politics.

"Parliament," or "the Army," is a body which consists of individual members constantly changing, and its existence is not dependent on their existence: it pre-existed any particular set of them, and it can survive a dissolution. Even after a complete slaughter, the idea of the Army would survive, and another would come into being, to carry on the permanent traditions and life.

Except as an idea in some sentient mind, it could not be said to exist at all. The mere individuals composing it do not make it: without the idea they would be only a disorganised mob. Abstractions like the British Const.i.tution, and other such things, can hardly be said to have any incarnate existence. These exist _only_ as ideas.

Parliament exists fundamentally as an idea, and it can be called into existence or re-incarnated again. Whether it is the same Parliament or not after a general election is a question that may be differently answered. It is not identical, it may have different characteristics, but there is certainly a sort of continuity; it is still a British Parliament, for instance, it has not changed its character to that of the French a.s.sembly or the American Congress. It is a permanent ent.i.ty even when disembodied; it has a past and it has a future; it has a fundamentally continuous existence though there are breaks or dislocations in its conspicuous activity, and though each incarnation has a separate ident.i.ty or personality of its own. It is larger and more comprehensive than any individual representation of it; it may be said to have a "subliminal self," of which any septennial period sees but a meagre epitome.

Some of those epitomes are more, some less, worthy; sometimes there appears only a poor deformity or a feeble-minded attempt, sometimes a strong and vigorous embodiment of the root idea.

As to its technical continuity of existence and actual mode of reproduction, I suppose it would be merely fanciful to liken the "Crown" to those germ-cells or nuclei, whose existence continues without break, which serve the purpose of collecting and composing the somatic cells in due season.

Other ill.u.s.trations of the temporary incarnation of a permanent idea are readily furnished from the domain of Art; but, after all, the best a.n.a.logy to life that I can at present think of is to be found in the subject of Magnetism.

At one time it was possible to say that magnetism could not be produced except by antecedent magnetism; that there was no known way of generating it spontaneously; yet that, since it undoubtedly occurs in certain rocks of the earth, it must have come into existence somehow, at date unknown. It could also be said, and it can be said still, that, given an initial magnet, any number of others can be made, without loss to the generating magnet. By influence or induction exerted by proximity on other pieces of steel, the properties of one magnet can be excited in any number of such pieces,--the amount of magnetism thus producible being infinite; that is, being strictly without limit, and not dependent at all on the very finite strength of the original magnet, which indeed continues unabated. It is just as if magnetism were not really manufactured at all, but were a thing called out of some infinite reservoir: as if something were brought into active and prominent existence from a previously dormant state.

And that indeed is the fact. The process of magnetisation, as conducted with a steel magnet on other pieces of previously inert steel, in no case really generates new lines of magnetic force, though it appears to generate them. We now know that the lines which thus spring into corporeal existence, as it were, are essentially closed curves or loops, which cannot be generated; they can be expanded or enlarged to cover a wide field, and they can be contracted or shrunk up into insignificance, but they cannot be created, they must be pre-existent; they were in the non-magnetised steel all the time, though they were so small and ill-arranged that they had no perceptible effect whatever; they const.i.tuted a potentiality for magnetism; they existed as molecular closed curves or loops, which, by the operation called magnetisation, could, some of them, be opened out into loops of finite area and spread out into s.p.a.ce, where they are called "lines of force."

They then const.i.tute the region called a magnetic field, which remains a seat of so-called "permanent" magnetic activity, until by lapse of time, excessive heat, or other circ.u.mstance, they close up again; and so the magnet, as a magnet, dies. The magnetism itself, however, has not really died, it has a perpetual existence; and a fresh act of magnetisation can recall it, or something indistinguishable from it, into manifest activity again; so that it, or its equivalent, can once more interact with the rest of material energies, and be dealt with by physicists, or subserve the uses of humanity. Until that time of re-appearance its existence can only be inferred by the thought of the mathematician: it is indeed a matter of theory, not necessarily recognised as true by the practical man.

Our present view is that the act of magnetisation consists in a re-arrangement and co-ordination of previously existing magnetic elements, lying dormant, so to speak, in iron and other magnetic materials; only a very small fraction of the whole number being usually brought into activity at any one time, and not necessarily always the same actual set. Only a small and indiscriminate selection is made from all the molecular loops; and it can be a different group each time, or some elements may be different and some the same, whenever a fresh individual or magnet is brought into being.

All this can be said concerning the old process of magnetisation--the process as it was doubtless familiar to the unknown discoverer of the lodestone, to the ancient users of the mariner's compa.s.s, and to Dr Gilbert of Colchester, the discoverer of the magnetised condition of the Earth.

But within the nineteenth century a fresh process of magnetisation has been discovered, and this new or electrical process is no longer obviously dependent on the existence of antecedent magnetism, but seems at first sight to be a property freshly or spontaneously generated, as it were. The process was discovered as the result of setting electricity into motion. So long as electricity was studied in its condition at rest on charged conductors, as in the old science of electrostatics or frictional electricity, it possessed no magnetic properties whatever, nor did it encroach on the magnetic domain: only vague similarities in the phenomena of attraction and repulsion aroused attention. But directly electricity was set in motion, const.i.tuting what is called an electric current, magnetic lines of force instantly sprang into being, without the presence of any steel or iron; and in twenty years they were recognised. These electrically generated lines of force are similar to those previously known, but they need no matter to sustain them. They need matter to display them, but they themselves exist equally well in perfect vacuum.

How did they manage to spring into being? Can it be said that they too had existed previously in some dormant condition in the ether of s.p.a.ce?

That they too were closed loops opened out, and their existence thus displayed, by the electric current?

That is an a.s.sertion which might reasonably be made: it is not the only way of regarding the matter, however, and the mode in which a magnetic field originates round the path of a moving charge--being generated during the acceleration-period by a pulse of radiation which travels with the speed of light, being maintained during the steady-motion period by a sort of inertia as if in accordance with the first law of motion, and being destroyed only by a return pulse of re-radiation during a r.e.t.a.r.dation-period when the moving charge is stopped or diverted or reversed--all this can hardly be fully explained until the intimate nature of an electric charge has been more fully worked out; and the subject now trenches too nearly on the more advanced parts of Physics to be useful any longer as an a.n.a.logue for general readers.

Indeed it must be recollected that no a.n.a.logy will bear pressing too far. All that we are concerned to show is that known magnetic behaviour exhibits a very fair a.n.a.logy to some aspects of that still more mysterious ent.i.ty which we call "life"; and if anyone should a.s.sert that all magnetism was pre-existent in some ethereal condition, that it would never go out of essential existence, but that it could be brought into relation with the world of matter by certain acts,--that while there it could operate in a certain way, controlling the motion of bodies, interacting with forms of energy, producing sundry effects for a time, and then disappearing from our ken to the immaterial region whence it came,--he would be saying what no physicist would think it worth while to object to, what many indeed might agree with.

Well, that is the kind of a.s.sertion which I want to make, as a working hypothesis, concerning life.

An acorn has in itself the potentiality not of one oak-tree alone, but of a forest of oak-trees, to the thousandth generation, and indeed of oak-trees without end. There is no sort of law of "conservation" here.

It is not as if something were pa.s.sed on from one thing to another. It is not a.n.a.logous to energy at all, it is a.n.a.logous to the magnetism which can be excited by any given magnet: the required energy, in both cases, being extraneously supplied, and only trans.m.u.ted into the appropriate form by the guiding principle which controls the operation.

We do not know how to generate life without the action of antecedent life at present, though that may be a discovery lying ready for us in the future; but even if we did, it would still be true (as I think) that the life was in some sense pre-existent, that it was not really created _de novo_, that it was brought into actual practical every-day existence doubtless, but that it had pre-existed in some sense too: being called out, as it were, from some great reservoir or storehouse of vitality, to which, when its earthly career is ended, it will return.

Indeed, it cannot in any proper sense be said ever to have left that storehouse, though it has been made to interact with the world for a time; and, if we might so express it, it may be thought of as carrying back with it, into the general reservoir, any individuality, and any experience and training or development, which it can be thought of as having acquired here. Such a statement as this last cannot be made of magnetism, to which no known law of evolution and progress can be supposed to apply; but of life, of anything subject to continuous evolution or linear progress embodied in the race, of any condition not cyclically determinate and returning into itself, but progressing and advancing--acquiring fresh potentialities, fresh powers, fresh beauties, new characteristics such as perhaps may never in the whole universe have been displayed before--of everything which possesses such powers as these, a statement akin to the above may certainly be made.

To all such things, when they reach a high enough stage, the ideas of continued personality, of memory, of persistent individual existence, not only may, but I think must, apply; notwithstanding the admitted return of the individual after each incarnation to the central store from which it was differentiated and individualised.

Even so a villager, picked out as a recruit and sent to the seat of war, may serve his country, may gain experience, acquire a soul and a width of horizon such as he had not dreamt of; and when he returns, after the war is over, may be merged as before in his native village.

But the village is the richer for his presence, and his individuality or personality is not really lost; though to the eye of the world, which has no further need for it, it has practically ceased to be.

CHAPTER IX

WILL AND GUIDANCE

(_Partially read to the Synthetic Society in February 1903._)