Problems of Life and Mind. Second series by George Henry Lewes (best contemporary novels TXT) 📕

beings than the similarities and dissimilarities in their Substance and History; and, whether the similarities are due to blood-relationship, or to other causes, the results are the same. There is something seductive in the supposition that Life radiated from a single centre in ever-increasing circles, its forms becoming more and more various as they came under more various conditions, until at last the whole earth was crowded with diversified existences. “From one cell to myriads of complex organisms, through countless æons of development,” is a formula of speculative grandeur, but I cannot bring myself to accept it; and I think that a lingering influence of the tradition of a “creative fiat” may be traced in its conception. May we not rather assume that the earth at the dawn of Life was a vast germinal membrane, every slightly diversified point producing its own vital form; and these myriads upon myriads of forms—all alike and all unlike—urged by the indwelling tendencies of development, struggled with each other for existence, many failing, many victorious, the victors carrying their tents into the camping ground of the vanquished. The point raised is the immense improbability of organized substance having been evolved only in one microscopic spot; if it were evolved at more than one spot, and under slightly varying conditions, there would necessarily have arisen in these earliest formations the initial diversities which afterwards determined the essential independence and difference of organisms.

129. Let us for a moment glance at the resemblances and diversities observable in all organisms. All have a common basis, all being constructed out of the same fundamental elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen; these (the organogens, as they are named), with varying additions of some other elements, make up what we know as Organic Substance, vegetal and animal. Another peculiarity all organisms have in common, namely, that their matter is neither solid nor liquid, but viscid. Beside this community of Substance we must now place a community of History. All organisms grow and multiply by the same process; all pass through metamorphic stages ending in death; all, except the very simplest, differentiate parts of their substance for special uses, and these parts (cilia, membranes, tubes, glands, muscles, nerves) have similar characters in whatever organism they appear, and their development is always similar, so that the muscles or nerves of an intestinal worm, a lobster, or a man, are in structure and history fundamentally alike. When, therefore, we see that there is no biological character of fundamental importance which is not universal throughout the organic world, when we see that in Structure and History all organisms have a community pervading every variety, it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that some hidden link connects all organisms into one; and when, further, it is seen that the most divergent forms may be so arranged by the help of intermediate forms only slightly varying one from the other, that the extreme ends—the monad and the man—may be connected, and a genealogical tree constructed, which will group all forms as modified descendants from a single form, the hypothesis that kinship is the bidden link of which we are in search becomes more and more cogent.

130. But now let the other aspect be considered. If there is an unmistakable uniformity, there is also a diversity no less unmistakable. The chemical composition of organic substances is various. Unlike inorganic substances, the composition of which is rigorously definite, organic substances are, within narrow limits, variable in composition (§ 45).

I pass over the resemblances and differences observed in the earliest stages of development, marked as they are, and direct attention to the fact, that down at what must be considered the very lowest organic region, we meet with differences not less striking than those met with in the highest, we find structures (if structures they may be called), which cannot be affiliated, so widely divergent is their composition. The structureless vibrio, for example, is not only capable of living in a medium destitute of Oxygen, but is, according to M. Pasteur, actually killed by oxygen; whereas the equally simple bacteria can no more dispense with Oxygen than other animals can. Consider for a moment the differences implied in the fact that one organism cannot even form an enveloping membrane to contain its protoplasm, whereas another contrives to secrete an exquisite shell; yet between the naked Rhizopod and the shelled Rhizopod our lenses and reagents fail to detect a difference. One Monad can assimilate food of only one kind, another Monad assimilates various kinds.73 What a revelation of chemical differences appears in the observations of M. Pasteur respecting the vibrio and bacteria, in a fermentescible liquid—the former beginning the putrid fermentation which the latter completes! We cannot doubt that some marked difference must exist between the single-celled organism which produces alcoholic fermentation, and that which produces acetic fermentation, and that again which produces butyric fermentation; and if we find distinctions thus established at the lowest region of the organic series, we need not marvel if the distinctions become wider and more numerous as the series becomes more diversified. The structure and development of an organism are dependent on the affinities of its constituent molecules, and it is a biological principle of great importance which Sir James Paget insists on, when he shows how “the existence of certain materials in the blood may determine the formation of structures in which they may be incorporated.”74 Any initial diversity may thus become the starting-point of a considerable variation in subsequent evolution.75 Thus, supposing that on a given spot there are a dozen protoplasts closely resembling each other, yet each in some one detail slightly varying; if this variation is one which, by its relations to the external medium, admits of a difference in the assimilation of materials present in the medium, it may be the origin of some new direction in development, and the ultimate consequence may be the formation of a shell, an internal skeleton, a muscle, or a nerve. Were this not so, it would be impossible to explain such facts as that chitine is peculiar to the Articulata, cellulose to Molluscoida, carbonates of lime to Mollusca and Crustacea, and phosphates to Vertebrata—all assimilated from the same external medium. But we see that from this medium one organism selects the materials which another rejects; and this selection is determined by the nature of the structure: which assimilates only those materials it is fitted to assimilate. We hear a great deal of Adaptation determining changes of structure and function, and are too apt to regard this process as if it were not intimately dependent on a corresponding structural change. By no amount of external influence which left the elementary composition of the structure unchanged, could an organism with only two tissues be developed into an organism with three or four. By no supply or stimulus, could an animal incapable of assimilating peroxide of iron acquire red blood corpuscles, although it might have the iron without the corpuscles; nor could an oyster form its shell unless capable of assimilating carbonate of lime. For myriads of years, in seas and ponds, under endless varieties of external conditions, the amœbæ have lived and died without forming a solid envelope, although the materials were abundant, and other organisms equally simple have formed envelopes of infinite variety. In all the seas, and from the earliest ages, zoophytes have lived, and assumed a marvellous variety of shapes and specialization of functions; but although some of them have acquired muscles, none have acquired true nerves, none bone. Ages upon ages rolled on before fishes were capable of forming bone; and thousands are still incapable of forming it, though living in the same waters as the osseous fishes.

131. “Looking to the dawn of life,” says Mr. Darwin (repeating an objection urged against his hypothesis), “when all organic beings, as we imagine, presented the simplest structure, how could the first steps in advancement, or in the differentiation and specialization of parts have arisen? I can make no sufficient answer; and can only say that, as we have no facts to guide us, all speculation would be baseless and useless.”

Where Mr. Darwin hesitates, lesser men need extra caution; but I must risk the danger of presumption, at least so far as to suggest that while an answer to this question is difficult on that dynamical view of Evolution which regards Function as determining Structure, it is less difficult on the statico-dynamical view propounded in these pages; the difficulty which besets the explanation when all the manifold varieties of organic forms are conceived as the successive divergences from an original starting-point, is lessened when a variety of different starting-points is assumed, in each of which some initial diversity prepared the way for subsequent differentiations; just as we know that between the ovum of a vertebrate and the ovum of an invertebrate, similar as they are, there is a diversity which manifests itself in their subsequent evolution. If Function is determined by Structure, and Evolution is the product of the two, it is clear that the different directions in the lines of development will have their origin in structural differences, and not in the action of external circumstances, unless these previously bring about a structural change. The action of the medium on the organism is assuredly a potent factor which Biology cannot ignore: but the organism itself is a factor, and according to its nature the influence of the medium is defined. (§ 118.)

132. Quitting for a moment the track of this argument, let us glance at the resemblances and differences observable in Plants and Animals, because most people admit that these have separate origins. The resemblances are scarcely less significant than those existing among animals. Both have a similar basis of elementary composition; not only are both formed out of protoplasts with similar properties, but in both the first step from the protoplasm to definite structure is the Cell. And the life of this Cell is remarkably alike in both, its phases of development being in many respects identical; nay, even such variations as obtain in the cell-membranes are curiously linked together by a community in the formative process.76 In both Plants and Animals we find individuals constituted—1st, by single cells; 2d, by groups of cells undistinguishable among each other; and 3d, by groups of differentiated cells. In both we find colonies of individuals leading a common life. In both the processes of Nutrition and Reproduction are essentially similar; both propagate sexually and asexually; both exhibit the surprising phenomena of parthenogenesis and alternate generations. In both there are examples of a free-roving embryo which in maturity becomes fixed to one spot, losing its locomotive organs and developing its reproductive organs. In both the development of the reproductive organs is the climax which carries Death. So close is the analogy between plant-life and animal-life, that it even reaches the properties usually held to be exclusively animal; I mean that even should we hesitate to accept Cohn’s discovery of the muscles in certain plants,77 we cannot deny that plants exhibit Contractility; and should we refuse to interpret as Sensibility the phenomena exhibited by the Sensitive Plants, we cannot deny that they present a very striking analogy to the phenomena of Sensibility exhibited by animals.

133. It is unnecessary to continue this enumeration, which might easily be carried into minute detail. A chapter of such resemblances would only burden the reader’s mind, without adding force to the conclusion that a surprising community in Substance and Life-history must be admitted between Plants and Animals. This granted, we turn to the differences, and find them no less fundamental and detailed. Chemistry tells us nothing of the differences in