Part 17

Picted, a Swiss scientist, concluded that because all chemical action of the kind which goes on in living things is annihilated at one hundred degrees below zero Centigrade, therefore chemical action and life are one. But chemical action is as old as the earth. Is life as old?

II. THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING WORLDS

I fancy I am not alone in having difficulty in uniting the two worlds--the living and the non-living--and in seeing them under the same law. In the one I see something like mind and purpose; every living thing shows something for which we have no name but intelligence. Organization demands an organizing principle. There is purpose in the wings of a bird, the legs of an animal, the fins of a fish, but where is there purpose in the orbs, in the comets, in the meteors? Or, to come down to the earth, where is there purpose in the mountains, in the stratified rocks, in the ocean, or in the air currents?

In a living body there are organs which function; in a non-living, there are parts which act and are acted upon. To see mind in all is the task--to see in gravity, in cohesion, in chemical affinity, in dissolution, anything at work akin to ourselves. We see irrefragable law; we see the sequence of cause and effect; we see the weather system work itself out--evaporation, condensation, precipitation, resulting in clouds, rainfall, springs, streams, lakes, and seas; we see the never-failing succession of the seasons; we see the law of the conservation of force; but do all these things imply the same intelligence, though unconscious, which we see in the sitting bird, or in the growing plant or tree? Is the cosmic order akin to the vital order? Of course mechanics and chemistry are one the universe over; atoms and molecules are atoms and molecules; but where does mind end, and law begin? Or, is it all law, or all mind, according to our point of view? The moral order, which is man’s order, we know has its limits, but I am trying to see if the rational order is coexistent with nature. The unity we seek we may find in the old conception of God, but this saddles all the turmoil and disorder and evil of the world upon an all-wise, all-good Being.

Shall we adopt the idea of a primal mind as distinct from the human mind, as the poets do? I grasp at anything that will help me see that I am akin to the farthest star, in my mind as in my body. I cannot think of a dual or a divided universe. I want to see myself as strung upon the same thread as all the rest of nature.

In organic evolution I see the workings of the creative impulse--or growth, as opposed to mere accretion or accumulation. In the light of the same law does one not see worlds and suns potential in the spiral nebulæ? Science helps us to see the evolution of the chemical elements, or to follow up this defining and differentiating process. Could we fly to the uttermost parts of the heavens, we should find the Cosmic Mind there before us.

III. THE ORGANIZING TENDENCY

Is it possible to think of any ingenious contrivance in nature as the result of chance, or of the fortuitous clashing and jostling of the elements? Living things are full of these ingenious contrivances which serve a definite end and keep life going. In the inorganic world there are no such contrivances; there is not the simplest bit of machinery--parts adjusted to parts, and the whole adjusted to some specific end. In all the clashing and jostling of bodies and forces through all the astronomic and geologic ages, not so much as the simplest mechanical device--a coiled spring or a carpenter’s hammer--has been struck out, and never can be. It is true that there are certain static conditions of matter that suggest design--natural bridges, natural obelisks, rude architectural and monumental structures, and human profiles on the rocks; but these are not the result of a constructive process, of a building-up, but the result of degradation: the erosive forces carve them out in obedience to the laws of matter and energy. We easily see how it all came about; and we can guide these forces so that they will repeat the process. But we do not see how the living body, with all its marvelous adjustments and coördinations, came about, and we cannot manipulate matter so as to produce the simplest living thing. Darwinians profess to see in natural selection--which is simply a name for an eliminating or sifting process--the explanation of even man himself. But the elimination of the weaker forms, which has gone on for whole geologic ages--for example, in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado--has not resulted in so much as one perfect, four-square foundation, or one perfect flying arch. Natural selection is not a creative, but a purely mechanical, process. We involuntarily personify it, and think of it as involving will and power of choice; think of it as selecting this and that, as a man does when he weeds his garden or selects his seeds, or breeds his animals. But it is not positive at all. It is negative--a dropping-out process.

Chance, or chance selection, works alike in the organic and the inorganic realms, but it develops no new forms in the inorganic, because there is no principle of development, no organizing push. But in organized matter there is, in and behind all this organizing, a developing principle or tendency; the living force is striving toward other forms; in other words, development occurs because there is something to develop. An acorn develops, but a quartz pebble only changes.

The living body is placed in a world of non-living bodies and forces, and it takes its chances; it develops only by their aid; if warmth and moisture are withheld, it ceases to develop; or, if warmth and moisture are in excess, it ceases to develop; its well-being is insured when it rides the inorganic forces, and is not ridden by them. It is subject to the law of chance of the world in which it is placed, but that law of chance does not explain its origin or its development as it does that of the non-living forms.

That it is all the result of design or purpose of an all-wise Being, working his will upon matter, is equally unthinkable. Yet if it is the result of chance, then the world of mind and soul is only a phase of mechanics and chemistry. In that case the head of a Paul or a Homer is no greater wonder than a volcanic bomb, having essentially the same origin. If we regard it as the work of design, we are compelled to saddle all the sin and misery, all the delays and failures and wastes of the geologic ages, upon Infinite Wisdom and Goodness, together with all the famine and pestilence and carnage and miscarriages of history.

For untold millions of years the earth was given up to low, groveling, all but brainless, bestial forms, devouring and devoured; for other untold millions it was the scene of a carnival of terrible dragon-like monsters--in the sea, on the earth, and in the air--a tragedy of monstrous forms enacted upon an unstable stage that rose and sank or was overwhelmed by fire and flood. For other long ages it was the scene of ape-like creatures struggling to be man, living in caves, contending with savage beasts, hirsute, forbidding, living by tooth and claw and muscular strength more than by wit, followed by the long historical period during which man appeared and has fought his way to his present stage of development, through blood and carnage and suffering and misdirected activities, dogged by all the evil and destructive passions, obstructed and thwarted, cut off by plagues and wars, engulfed by earthquakes, devoured by fire and flood, blinded by his own ignorance, consumed by his own evil passions, yet making steady progress toward the position which he now holds in the animal kingdom.

IV. SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM

The bogey of teleology frightens a good many honest scientific minds. To recognize anything akin to intelligence in nature, or to believe that a universal mind is immanent in, or a part of, the cosmos, is looked upon as disloyalty to the scientific spirit.

Lamarck’s idea of an indwelling directing principle in organic evolution discredited him with Darwin, and with the leading biologists since his time. Yet Darwin said he could not look upon the universe as the result of chance. But he faltered before the other alternative--that any will or design lay back of it.

It is unfortunate that these words connote things purely human, and to that extent are likely to lead us astray. But are not all our terms human, even the word “astray” itself? Can we have any other? Emerson says that anything may be affirmed or denied of the Infinite, and that God can be hinted only in signs and symbols. In trying to describe time, we need a new language that differs as much from our ordinary speech as algebra differs from arithmetic. The circle and sphere are the only complete types of Infinity.

In Professor Loeb’s mechanistic conception of life there is no hint of mind or soul; all is matter and force. All the mechanists and energists and materialists unconsciously endow their matter and force with creative power, thus elevating them to the rank of a Deus.

Science knows no mysteries; it knows only insoluble problems and comparatively few of them. But may not one see mysteries in nature without being a mystic? Physical facts may be inexplicable, but we do not call them mysteries. The birth and development of the cell is wonderful, but can we say that it is mysterious? Does not mystery imply something occult and unknowable? Is a biologist or evolutionist to be charged with mysticism because he refuses to admit that the development of species is all a matter of chance? If he believes, for instance, that the horse as we know him was inevitable in that small beast of Eocene times, the eohippus, is he to be charged with a teleological taint? Or if we speak of the predestined course of evolution are we unfaithful to the true scientific spirit? Is not the acorn predestined to become an oak? Does growth imply a mysterious guiding force or principle? The little brown house wren that fusses and chatters here around its box on my porch has come all the way from Central America. Did something guide it? Life is full of this kind of guidance. Not much of nature can be explained by addition and subtraction; not much of it can be explained by mere mechanics, or physics; not much of it can be explained by the doctrine of chance. There are reasons behind reasons. You may give good physiological reasons why the heart beats, why the liver secretes bile, why the digestive processes go on and our food nourishes us, but can you find the mind by dissecting the brain or connect mind with matter?

Mysticism belongs to the sphere of our religious emotions, and when we read natural phenomena through these emotions we are mystical. We cannot say that the course of evolution has been directed, and we cannot say it goes by chance. The changes of the seasons are not directed; the circuit of the waters from the earth, through the sea to the clouds and back to the earth, is not directed; the orbs in their courses are not directed; the sap in the trees, the blood in our veins, are not directed; neither are these things by chance. “An inward perfecting principle” is the divinity that shapes the ends of all organisms.

Many scientific men are so shy of teleology that they tend to the other extreme and land in a world of chance.

Now, if man and all the other forms of life are the result of chance, then Chance is a very good god and should be written with a capital. No matter what we call the power out of which the universe flows, or with which it is identified, it is a veritable Deus.

We cannot affirm that we are the result of chance, nor the result of design, as we use these words in our daily lives. These words apply to parts and fragments of which our lives are made up. They do not help us in dealing with the whole. We share in the life of the universe; we are a part of it, and what keeps it going keeps us going. What set evolution on foot and evolved the organic from the inorganic is the parent of us all. It is not we that are immortal; it is life, and the universe. We pass like shadows, but the sun remains--for a season. We say of a thing, or an event, that it came by chance, when we see no will like unto our own directing it; at the same time we know that the laws of matter and force control everything. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without their immutable decrees. In the same sense the hairs of our heads are numbered.

When we discuss or describe the universe in terms of experience, we are dealing in half-truths. We cannot describe a sphere in terms of angles and right lines; no more can we describe or interpret the All in terms of our own experience.

If it were Chance, or Darwin’s Natural Selection, or orthogenesis, or whatever it was, that brought me and all other forms of life here, that gave me my mind and body, that put my two eyes and my two ears just where they are of most service to me, and my two arms and hands, and my two legs and feet, and all my internal organs, my double circulation, my heart to pump the blood and keep the vital machinery going, my secretions and my excretions, my lungs to lay hold of the air and purify the blood, my liver and kidneys to eliminate the poisons and effete matter, my marvelous digestive system to furnish the fuel that generates the physical power, and, more than all these things, that looked after my germ in the old Cambrian seas and brought it safely down through the hazards of the long road of evolution and developed it and made me a man, and gave me the capacity to contemplate and enjoy this amazing universe--the power or the blind force or the law of chance, I say, that could do all this is god enough for me. I want no other.

Do we expect to see the Natural Providence at work as we see man at work? Nature works from the inside. In the human sphere there is a maker and a thing made. Not so in the universe. Things are in their place without being made. Our concepts of the beginning and the end do not apply to them. The words “chance” and “design” are born of our limited knowledge.

That man or an ant or a leaf or a flower could result from the haphazard jostling together of the molecules of matter, or the units of force, is unthinkable. Could one get an intelligent sentence, or one’s own name, by putting the letters of the printer’s type in a hat and shaking them up till the crack of doom?--an old and trite comparison, but it seems to state the case fairly. And yet, how can a naturalist fall back upon teleology? Is not Nature sufficient unto herself? Must we inject our own little methods and makeshifts into the ways of the Eternal? We might as well try to walk off the sphere as try to compass this problem in the terms of our own experience. The inscrutable, the unthinkable, the unknowable, confront us on all sides.

So far as I can see the Creative Energy in nature has no plan nor end. Plans are the ways of the finite, not of the Infinite. Man alone has plans and ends. The Infinite cannot be defined or interpreted in terms of our human lives. It transcends all speech. To name any one thing as the purpose and end of creation is like naming the end of a sphere, or the direction of a circle. All bodies with which we deal on the earth have an upper and an under side, but the earth itself is all top side; there is no under side, though the orbs in the heavens, to our eye, have a lowest point or bottom side. Every tangible body with which we deal rests upon some other body, but the orbs float in vacuity. The irregular solid bodies with which we deal have three dimensions--length, breadth, and thickness--but, properly speaking, the sphere has none of these; it has only mass.

When we discuss or attempt to describe what we call God, or what I call the Eternal, in terms of man, as the theologians do, something within us rises up and says, No. A magnified man, or a man raised to the nth power, is not God; he is still man. I fancy that with most men the denial of a God means simply this: there is no God who can be described in the terms usually employed. One is an atheist because he cannot accept a God made in man’s image. It belittles the Mystery. Our belief in God is so radical that we reject half-gods. The fatherhood of God means no more than the manhood of God, or the governorship, or the judgeship, of God.