Nature and life. Facts and doctrines relating to the constitution of matter, the new dynamics, and the philosophy of nature

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NATURE AND LIFE.

II

If the web of things, the essence of matter, is one single substance, who was the Orpheus under whose spell these materials gathered, ranged, and diversified themselves into natures of so many kinds? And, first of all, how can the extension of bodies proceed from an assembling of unextended principles? The answer to this first question does not seem difficult to us. Extension exists prior to matter. They are two distinct things, without any relation of causality or finality. Matter no more proceeds from extension than extension proceeds from matter. This simple remark suffices to settle the difficulty of conceiving how the dimension of objects results from a group of dynamic points which have no dimension. Extension existing before every thing else, itis quite clear that, when certain primal energies come into union to give rise, through a thousand successive complications, to phencmena and to bodies, what they really produce is not the appearance of extension, which is the mere shadow of reality, but it is that collection of varied and diverse activities which enable us to describe and define phenomena and bodies.

It is no longer a subject of doubt, in the minds of savants who have got beyond experimentation, that extension is an image and a show rather than an essential constituent property of bodies. The extension of bodies is a phenomenon which takes its rise in the collision of force with our minds. - Charles de Rémusat, so long ago as 1842, gave an original and remarkable demonstration of this. He maintains that force is the cause of extension, meaning by that that the sensation of extension is a modification of our sensibility, occasioned by forces analogous to those which produce sensations of a more complex kind. When.

you experience an electric shock, you are struck. Percussion is the sensation of contact,in other words, of impulsion by something that has extension. Now, in this instance, Rémusat says, the cause of percussion, electricity, has no extension. Therefore, he adds, either electricity is nothing, or else it is a force which affects us in a way that may be compared to the effect of extension. So that a force, wanting the usual appearances of extension, may produce the same effects on us that a solid body in motion does. Within afew yearsa profound metaphysician, Magy, has pointed out by new arguments that corporeal extension is merely a show which springs from the internal reaction of the soul against the impression made on the sensorium, and which the soul translates to outward bodies, by a law analogous to that which makes it localize in the separate organs of sense the impression which it has neyertheless perceived only in the brain. Hach sensation of taste, smell, light, or sound, is a phenomenon of psychological reaction which occurs in the soul when it is teased with a certain degree of energy by nerve-action, which in its turn depends on an outward action; but there is no relation of resemblance between the latter and the sensation it provokes. The ether, which, by its vibrations in unison with the elements of our retina, produces sensations of light in us, has in itself no luminosity. The proof of this is, that two rays of light meeting under certain conditions may annul each other, and produce darkness. Now, Magy maintains that the subjectivity of extension is of the same order with that of light. Extension in general is explained by purely dynamic reasons, as readily as that particular extension is which serves as a kind of support for luminous phenomena, which evidently result from vibrations of the unextended principles. Helmholtz, in his latest writings, fully adopts this doctrine of corporeal extension.

We thus see that there is no difficulty in reconciling extension with unextended forces, and the phenomena of extension with principles of action; but this is only the first part of the problem, and it becomes necessary now to ascend from these unextended forces and active principles to those more or less complex manifestations which make up the infinite universe, adorning space with imperishable variety. Let usimagine this universe filled with the greatest conceivable number of active principles, all identical, diffused uniformly throughout immensity, and consequently in a state of perfect equilibrium. All will be torpid in absolute repose, in which form without shape and force without spring will be as though they were not. Between a homogeneous, motionless substance, identical with itself throughout space at all points, and nihility, reason perceives no difference. In such a system, nothing has weight, for there is no attracting centre; heat is no more possible for it than light, since these two forms of energy are bound up with the existence of systems of unequal vibrations, of diversified media, and varying molecular arrangements. A fortiori, the phenomena of life will be incompatible with this universal unity of substance, this unchanging identity of force.

The objective existence of things, the coming into reality of phenomena, can only be conceived, therefore, as the work of a certain number of differentiations taking place in the deep of that universal energy of primal matter, which is the last result of our analysis of the world. Motion, of itself alone, is enough to explain a first attribute of that energy, namely, resistance, and its consequence, impenetrability ; but this is only on the condition that this motion shall take place in various directions.’ Two forces urged in opposite directions, and coming to a meeting, manifestly resist each other. It is probably by collisions of this sort that those variable condensations of matter, and those heterogeneous groupings of which the world presents the spectacle, have been determined. A rotary movement, communicated to a mass without weight, can only engender concentric spheres, which gravitate toward each other in consequence of pressure by the interposing ether. The famous experiments of Plateau are decisive in this respect. That accomplished physicist introduces oil into a mixture of water and alcohol, having exactly equal density with the oil itself. He inserts a metallic strip into the midst of this mass of oil, which is free

1“ Any relation of action implies at least twofoldness. We have then at once dissimilarity, and it would be more correct to say, action takes place only between dissimilars. Between like things, action requires at least a difference of place, yet even with that difference like things act but slightly on each other. The production of such a phenomenon requires opposition in forces between them. In chemistry, only dissimilars act on each other. All Nature witnesses that a certain degree of difference between bodies is needed for their mutual action.”—CHaRLEs DE RE- MUSAT.

from the action of any force, and turns it about. The oil takes the form of a sphere, and, as soon as the rotation grows very rapid, breaks up, and parts into a number of smaller spheres. The celestial spheres were probably formed in the same way, and an exactly similar mechanical action produces those clear dew-drops, glittering like diamonds, on the leaves of plants.

All physical phenomena, whatever their nature, are at bottom only manifestations of one and the same primordial agent. We can no longer question this general conclusion of all modern discoveries, Sénarmont explicitly says, though it is, as yet, impossible to formulate with precision its laws and its particular conditions. If this be true, and we hope we have proved it to be so, it is plain that those conditional particularities of which Sénarmont speaks, that is to say, those diversified manifestations of the sole agent to which he alludes, can depend only on differences in the motions which impel it. Now, the very existence of these differences necessarily implies a codrdinating and regulating intelligence; but how much more extreme is the necessity for such a cause in chemical phenomena, which display such endless complications issuing from that primal energy to which every thing in the last analysis is reduced! We have seen that the variety of those stable and homogeneous energies known under the name of simple bodies, the number of which is now increased to sixty, depends on the variety of the vibrations that each one of these little worlds performs. This is the earliest intervention of a principle of difference. This principle does not merely determine the multiplication of simple bodies; it also acts in any one element with such intensity that the same element can acquire very unlike properties and attributes. What things are more heterogeneous than the diamond and charcoal, or than common phosphorus and amorphous phosphorus? Yet charcoal and diamond are chemically identi- 2 cal, just as the two sorts of phosphorus are. These cases of isomery, which are quite numerous, attest with the strongest evidence the excessive variability of which combinations of force are capable. When we see the same elements, combined in the same weight-proportions, produce sometimes harmless substances, sometimes terrible poisons, in one case evolve colorless or dingy products, in another brilliant hues, we become convinced that primal matter is of little consequence in comparison with the power of the weaver who arranges its threads, and knows beforehand what the aspect of the web will be. Besides, it is not alone in the whole that the formative principle is displayed ; it shows forth also in the elements, considered individually, since every one of them exhibits tendencies, elective affinities, that bear witness to some obscure instinct toward harmonious completion.

There is not only a prodigious variety in the disposition of the atoms which make up molecules, and in the arrangement of the molecules among themselves, but this arrangement is governed, besides, by admirable geometric laws. The atoms that make up molecules are not heaped and flung together at random and in disorder; they enter into composition only in fixed proportions and in fixed directions. Marc-Antoine Gaudin has proved, in a late treatise devoted entirely to these refined inquiries, the existence of some of the most important laws in the geometry of atoms. This ingenious and persevering writer demonstrates that all chemical molecules, whether they are fitted to produce erystals or not, are formed by a symmetrical aggregation of atoms. ‘The latter are arranged in equilibrium in two directions, perpendicular to each other, one parallel to the axis of grouping, and the other at right angles to that axis, so as always to compose a symmetrical figure. The most complicated bodies, so soon as they are brought under tke law of definite proportions, and compose chemical species, are made up of molecules in which the atoms are grouped in prisms, in pyramids, in a word, in polyhedra more or less many-sided, but always of perfect regularity; so that, in this case, the differentiation is regulated with marvelous harmony.

We must now rise another degree, and pass from inorganic matter to living matter. What is it that distinguishes the latter from the former? When we make the answer depend on the results of direct experiment, nothing is easier than to establish the differential characteristics of living matter. In the first place, it is organized, that is, the anatomical elements, instead of being homogeneous and symmetrical in all points of their mass, are composed by the association of a certain number of different substances, in which carbon predominates, and which are termed immediate organic principles... Then these elements grow. At no time the same throughout, as to the substance which makes them up, they are in a state of unceasing molecular renewal, of constant metamorphosis, of simultaneous and continuous assimilation and disassimilation. Besides, the various properties these elements may exhibit, contractility, neurility, and so on, are, in consequence of the growing state that characterizes them, in so unstable a condition of equilibrium that the slightest variation in the surrounding medium is enough to occasion some change in the expression of their activity ; in other words, they have excessive excitability and irritability. Such, at least, is the region within which physiology is limited; but the fact which it does not clearly enough bring out, yet the thing which is the distinctive mark of life, is the harmonious seeking for each other of all these vital monads, the disposition of

1 “The structure of chemical compounds is subject only to mathematieal laws, which laws do not control that of organized matter. In germs and their products there exists a want of symmetry in their axes, which indicates a formative purpose, or, more properly, a creative omnipotence.” —Gaunin, “ Architecture of the World of Atoms,” p. 8.

biological energies to compose groups of which the end and the reason are found in what we call the individual. The differentiations of inorganic matter occur in molecules that are specific, in whatever bulk they are regarded. The differentiations of living matter take place only in individuals whose build and proportions are strictly determined. An iron bar, an iron crystal, and iron-dust, are all still iron. An organic substance fitted for life is nothing, whenever deprived of connection with an organism. It can display energy, can act, in a word, can be, so far as to be a living substance, only in virtue of taking place and rank in a certain whole, and assuming certain dependencies and connections with other more or less analogous substances. By itself it is not distinguished in essence from dead matter. It is raised-to the rank and clothed with the dignity of life only from the time of its reception into that gathering of which the steps all move toward the same.end, which is the functional action of the organism, and_the perpetuation of the species.

What takes place in the ovule is a miniature image of what takes place in the universe. The differentiations occurring in that mucous drop are a copy of the differentiations unfolding and expanding in the ocean of the world. It is at first a microscopic mass, homogeneous, uniform in all its parts, a collection of energies identical with each other, and the group of which does not differ perceptibly from a drop of gelatine, hanging, hardly seen, from a needle’s point. Yet soon a dull motion spontaneously stirs these nearly inert atoms, and this motion is expressed by a first condensation of the ovular or vitelline substance, which is the germinating vesicle. This passes off, but at the same time other vibrations arrange the molecules of this shapeless, transparent microcosm, in the order of more complicated groups. The vitelline substance swells toward the surface, where it forms the polar globules, while at the centre it thickens to produce the vitelline nucleus. This in turn cleaves and breaks into a great number of secondary nuclei, around each of which the ovular mass distributes itself while contracting. Instead of a single cell, the ovule, which has enlarged, is now found to contain a great number. These cells, called blastodermic, then tend to arrange themselves in two layers, two leaflets placed back to back, within which the elements of the embryo appear, and little by little develop, pursuing a continuous growth, in which forces becoming forms go on incessantly producing and multiplying new forces and new forms. :

Now, these separations and distributions, these orderings and classifyings, these harmonies that are set up in the ovule to compose by slow degrees the structure of the embryo, reveal a principle of differentiation analogous to that which has caused the infinite variety of things we see come forth from the confused mass of cosmic energies. There is, as many biologists had felt assured, and as Coste has had the glory of clearly demonstrating in a work which is one of the noblest scientific monuments of this age, there is a force which gives reality, direction, life, to the forms of organized matter in the egg. All eggs are alike at first. There is a complete similitude in structure and substance between those which will produce a lion and those which will produce a mouse. The forms are identical, though the futures of those forms differ. It is, as Coste very well says, that “beneath that form, and beyond what the eye views, there is something which sight cannot reach, something which contains in itself the sufficient reason for all those differences now concealed under unity of configuration, and to become visible only later.” This guiding idea, which Coste has brought forward, and which is admitted by all physiologists at this day, is as far from issuing out of the elementary forces of nutrition as the painter’s picture is from being the creature of his palette,

Yet nothing in the ovule reveals its hidden and potent virtuality. Claude Bernard, who has repeated Coste’s ideas on this subject, dwells strongly on the guiding force which is in the egg, and those savants who agree with Robin in denying this force, so far as it acts on the totality of elements in the embryo, regard it at least as shared, distributed, and acting in each of these elements separately, which, at bottom, is the same thing. We see, in any case, that there is in the inmost depth, and there dates from the most rudimentary sketch of the organized being, the fixed and formed idea of those differences in choice and those sympathies in work whose system shall build up the individual. The differential coefficient of organized matter is thus of a far higher order than that of mineral matter. It is this which is a distinct and peculiar result from the impotence which experimental science betrays more plainly every day, when attempting to convert physico-chemical activities into energies of the vital order. Even could this conversion really be effected, and it is not metaphysically impossible that it might be, the existence of a spiritual principle of differentiation would be in no wise put in doubt. Hitherto, at least, such a conversion seems beyond the reach of man. | Something that yet more completely baffles his research, while commanding too his highest admiration, is the supreme degree of complexity together with refinement of that energy which is the soul. Human thought is the sum of all the forces of Nature, because it assimilates them all, while distinguishing between them, by the work that it performs upon sensations.

Sensations are to thought what food is to growth. Growth is not a result of feeding; thought is not a result of sensations. Nutrition, in shaping the living organs, determines the differentiation of the concrete forms in the individual’s substance; thought, in shaping general ideas, determines the differentiation of the abstract forces in the world. Thus thinking energy is as much superior to sensations as nutritive energy is to aliments. In another order of thought, we might compare the soul to a paper covered with writing in sympathetic ink. At ordinary temperatures, the letters are unseen, but they appear in fine color whenever brought near the fire. So the soul has within itself dim marks and confused shapes, which sensation tints and brightens. We have seen that, in the mucous drop, a two hundred and fiftieth part of an inch through, called the ovule, the forces and tendencies of the whole nutritive and intellectual life of man lie prisoned and asleep. So, too in that force without form or extension which is the soul, there dwells a miniature picture of the whole universe, and, by some mystic grace of God, a dream, as it were, of that God himself. Thought consists in becoming acquainted with all the details of that picture in little, and unfolding its meaning. ‘Thus, that which makes the whole reality of material things is form, and form, such as it is shown to us in the world, is at once a principle of differentiation and a principle of agreement; in other words, it is the work of an intelligence. Body and motion are mere phenomena. The first is only an image of substance, the last an image of action; but substance and action both are only effects of intelligent force, that is, of activity operating in view of a result. ‘That activity, however, presents infinitely varied degrees of condensation, and we may say, with Maudsley: ‘One equivalent of chemical force corresponds to several equivalents of lower force; and one equivalent of vital force to several equivalents of chemical force.” It is thus that modern science unties the Gordian knot of the composition of matter.

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A first exclusively analytical view of the world has led us to a first undeniable certainty, the existence of a principle of energy and motion. A second view of the universe, exclusively synthetic, leads us, as we have seen, to another certainty, which is the existence of a principle ef differentiation and harmony. ‘This principle is what is called mind. Thus mind is not substance, but it is the law of substance; it is not force, but it is the revealer of force. It is not life, but it makes life exist. It is not thought, but it is the consciousness of thought. A distinguished English savant, Carpenter, has said lately, with decisive clearness, “Mind is the sole and single source of power.” In a word, it is not reality, yet in it and by it realities are defined and differentiated, and consequently exist. Instead of saying that mind is a property of matter, we should say that matter is a property of mind. Of all the properties of matter, in fact, there is not one, no, not a single one, which is not bestowed on it by mind. The true explanation, the only philosophy of Nature, is thus a kind of spiritualistic dynamism, very different from materialism, or from the mechanism of certain contemporary schools. .

Materialism is false and imperfect, because it stops short at atoms, in which it localizes those properties for which atoms supply no cause, and because it neglects force and spirit, which are the only means we have, constituted as our souls are, of conceiving the activity and the appearings of beings. It is false and imperfect, because it stops halfway, and treats compound and resolvable factors as simple and irreducible ones ; and because it professes to represent the world by shows, without attempting to explain the production of those shows. In a word, it sees the cause of diversity where it is not, and fails to see it where it does exist. The source of differentiations cannot be in energy itself; it must be ina principle apart from that energy,ina .

superior will and consciousness, of which we have, doubtless, only a dim and faulty idea, but as to which we can yet

— affirm that they have some analogy with the inner light which fills us, and which we shed forth from us, and which teaches us, by its mysterious contact with the outer world, the infinite order of the universe.’

The danger from materialism is not, as we usually incline to think, corruption of morals by degradation of the soul. Too much use, for censure’s sake, has been made, against this system, of the seeming ease with which its professors have convinced themselves that they cut up by the roots the very principles of morality and duty. History proves, by examples too infamous, that barbarism and license are the privilege of no philosophic sect. The real enemies of society always have been, and always will be, the ignorant and the fanatical, and it must be frankly owned that, if these exist within the pale of materialism, there are quite enough of them outside. The danger in the doctrine which reverses the natural relation of things, and asserts that spirit is the product of matter, when in truth matter is a product of spirit, this danger is of another kind; materialism is fatal to the development of the experimental sciences themselves. If, in such a case, the example of men of genius might be appealed to, how eloquent would be the testimony of the two greatest physicists of this age, Ampére and Faraday, both so earnestly convinced, so religiously possessed by the reality of the un-" seen world! But there are other arguments. ‘“ All that we see of the world,” says Pascal, “is but an imperceptible scratch in the vast range of Nature.” The claim of

1 “That cause, mould, or type, of all constitutions of beings,” says De Rémusat, in a famous essay on this subject, “that general Nature, the original or principle of all natures, that force which fashions, specifies, and characterizes all these kinds of beings, cannot be conceived of as a constant property of any being, because the diversity between all these beings is what it has to account for. I look upon this as the strongest proof of the presence of a will and an intelligence exerting their power throughout all Nature.”

mere experimentalism is that it may sentence men to the fixed and stubborn contemplation of this scratch. What folly! All the history of the development of the sciences proves that important discoveries all proceed from a different feeling, which is that of continuation of forces beyond the limits of observation, and of a harmony in relations, overruling the singularities and deformities of detached experiences. To hedge one’s self within what can be computed, weighed, and demonstrated, to trust such evidence only, and bar one’s self inside the prison of the senses, to hush or scorn the suggestions of the spirit, our only true light, because it is the spark of the flame that vivifies all— this is, deny it or not, the condition and the subject state of materialism. Only reason can conceive the fixity, the generality, and the universality of relations, and all savants admit that the destiny of science is to establish laws possessing these three characteristics; but to admit that is to confess by implication that partial, incoherent, imperfect, relative details must undergo a refining, a thorough conversion in the alembic of the mind, whence they issue, with so new an aspect and meaning, that what before seemed most important becomes as mere an accessory as it is possible to be, and that which looked most ephemeral takes its place among eternal things.

The conception of atoms dates from the highest antiquity. Leucippus and Democritus, the masters of Epicurus, several centuries before the Christian era, taught that matter is composed of invisible but indestructible corpuscles, the number of which is as boundless as the vastness of the space in which they are diffused. These corpuscles are solid, endowed with shape and motion. The difference of their forms regulates the difference of their movements, and consequently of their characteristics. The conception of a principle guiding these diversities, that is, of an intelligence as the supreme cause of differentiation, is not less

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. pay!

ancient. ‘‘ All was chaotic,” Anaxagoras of Clazomene said; “‘ an intelligence intervened, and regulated all.” Plato, after defining matter as an existence very hard to understand, an eternal place, never perishing, and furnishing a stage for whatever begins to be, not the subject of sense and yet perceptible, and of which we only catch glimpses as in a dream, tells us that the supreme ruler “took this mass which was whirling in unchecked and unguided movement, and made order come out of disorder.” And this ordering grows real in conformity with ideas, the prototypes of things, whose totality makes the divine essence itself. The world’s activities are reflections of God’s thoughts. To these two fundamental notions, that of atomism and that of idealism, Aristotle added a third, that of dynamism. As he holds, indeterminate matter, in the highest degree of abstraction, is without attributes. If it tends always toward form and action, that is because it contains a principle of power, a ferce. Force is, in Aristotle’s view, the principle of form. The latter is actually existent. We have here the whole ancient philosophy regarding the world. Modern philosophy has taught us nothing different. Atomism, strengthened and widened by Descartes, and borrowed from him by Newton, is identical at bottom with that held by the teachers of Epicurus. In the same way, Leibnitz’s dynamism is only a revival of Aristotle’s. And, just as Descartes and Leibnitz reproduce the old Greek masters, contemporary science renews Descartes and Leibnitz.

“ But what!” it will be said; “always repeating, never inventing, must that be the fixed doom of metaphysics?” Not so; these renewals contain continuous growth toward perfection. The old truth has been preserved, in its original sense, but it has been constantly illuminated and made exact in the lapse of time by happy efforts of speculative genius. Greek atomism left an immense chasm which Descartes filled by the conception of ether, the most marvelous of modern creations. Aristotle’s dynamism was vague, and Leibnitz gave it precision by showing that the type and the fountain of force is and can be nothing else than mind. He lifted the conception of force to the conception of soul. And what has been done in our days? We have computed the motion, we have detected the action, of that subtile ether; we have proved the absolute imperishableness of force; we have shown by many instances the fundamental identity of the appetitive and elective powers of chemistry and crystallography with those which psychology reveals. Here is the future of science and of metaphysics. Both will henceforth follow in their development the very course they have held to since the first day; they have never, like Penelope, destroyed yesterday’s work the day after. They have pursued the same end with continuous advance, that is, the conception of invisible principles, and of the ideal essence of things. This end will remain the ever-unattained goal of their ambition. The farther we shall advance, the more clearly and convincingly will they persist in defining those primal forces and elementary activities half guessed at from the very dawn of thought. Never false to themselves, they will always, at whatever point in history we appeal to them, represent the human soul unchanging in its nature, its powers, and its hopes. Let them never muse over the mournful question whether the work of the past will not vanish at some time without leaving a trace. All of it will survive, and from this confidence those who strive to increase the sum of knowledge draw their courage and consolation. }