Materialists have shown that the organism closely resembles a steam engine, but they have neglected to point[108] out that the similarity extends also to the mode in which they are produced. Everybody is probably convinced that the forces of nature have never made and never will make a steam engine. If the same might be said in regard to the machines which we call organisms, then materialism5 would be disproved. But why, to begin with, cannot the forces of nature build steam engines? We must be able to present the reasons for this statement.
If we first consider the building material, we find this in the factories in the form of plates, bars and ingots of iron, copper6, lead, tin, etc. Where do these metals come from? Nowhere in nature is such material found.[2]
Humanity had inhabited the earth thousands of years without having an[109] idea of the existence of such substances as iron, copper, lead, etc. The metals are chemical ingredients in our minerals and from these minerals they are extracted by complicated, artificial processes. The ore is often lifted out of the depths of the mountains; it goes through a series of treatments which the forces of nature cannot spontaneously undertake. We will here give only a moment’s attention to the process of reduction, or the separation of the metal from its natural compounds. This, as we know, is done in our blast furnaces, where the iron is reduced through the presence of coal and other suitable substances in certain proportions. If we now remember that the heat in our furnaces often reaches about 2000° Centigrade we see at once that the sun may shine on our mountains throughout eternity7 without ever producing the temperature necessary for the reduction.
But the engine is not yet completed. The plates must be first rolled and[110] shaped, the ingots must be melted and cast into frames, shafts8, bearings, etc.; in short, the raw material must be formed into all those numerous parts of which the machine is composed. The engine is from beginning to end a product of art.
There is especially one circumstance pertaining9 to all these transformations10 that merits a closer attention. If we remember that all the material used in a product of art is taken from nature, and besides that, all the processes in making and shaping the raw material are carried out through the employment of natural laws, we might still ask the question, why physical forces should not enter spontaneously into the necessary artificial combinations for producing this result. Until we have pointed11 out the quality in matter which prevents this, we have not completely demonstrated the inability of natural forces to build an engine spontaneously.
This quality has been named vis[111] inertiae, the inertia12 of matter, one of the most important natural laws that exist. What does this law teach us? It says that matter cannot itself change its condition. If a body is in motion it can never come to rest unless another force at least equal to the primary opposes the motion. If it be at rest, it cannot impart motion unto itself; energy, applied13 from without, is necessary. Inertia keeps the earth moving around the sun; a stone thrown into the air would proceed everlastingly14 with its initial velocity15 if the attraction of the earth did not interfere2.
Because of this quality, then, matter remains16 in its natural equilibrium17. An engine would never be built because the ore would stay in the mountains and the metals forever remain in their compounds. Every product of art requires a foreign interference in the material world; matter, in consequence of its inertia, presents a determined18 and often very energetic resistance to such an intervention19.
[112]
Exactly the same reasons that prevent natural forces from building a steam engine, cause also their inability to produce an organism, and this in a much higher degree because the organism is in a still fuller sense a product of art. The organic building material, instead of being plates and ingots of iron, copper, lead, etc., consists of carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorin, potassium, sodium20, magnesia, etc., or both metals and metalloids of which the former, on account of their negative, and the latter because of their positive qualities cannot exist in a free state. From the minerals found in nature these substances must be extracted for organic purposes. The elements are different, but otherwise we may verbally repeat in regard to organic substance what has been previously21 said about the steam engine.
It is the creation of organic matter by art that the materialists have neglected to take into account. Therefore they look upon the organism just as a[113] new race, suddenly succeeding humanity, would view our steam engines. These machines would certainly appear very mysterious to the earth’s new inhabitants. But a growing civilization would undoubtedly22 discover that all the material used in the engine is taken from ores to be found in nature. If now somebody would draw the conclusion that these ores themselves had made the engine he would reason as do the materialists today in regard to the organism. The parallel does not halt in any respect, but it is sufficient in this connection to call attention only to one or two of the more important components23 of the organism.
Organic matter, or combustible24 substance, consists of carbon and hydrogen which in an organism are comparable to the iron in a steam engine. But nowhere in nature is free hydrogen or free inorganic25 carbon to be found. The carbon was burned to carbonic acid in earth’s first combustion26, and similarly the hydrogen was burned to[114] water long before the conditions for organic life existed on the earth.
From these original products of combustion, burnable organic matter is formed by decomposition27 of carbonic acid and water into their elements, carbon and hydrogen, and by their subsequent combination through feebler chemical forces into sugar, starch28, etc., which substances through a new combustion are again turned into carbonic acid and water. The natural forces cannot spontaneously undertake these transformations that only take place because of artificial arrangements. The processes of nature go in the entirely opposite direction, as we have seen.
As a matter of fact, the reduction of carbonic acid and water is done through the direct assistance of living beings. From the sun they take their power. But how ineffective the sun would be, left to itself, is seen already by the fact that carbonic acid is disintegrated29 at a temperature of 1300° C. and water only at 1500°.[115] Products of art must be resorted to, and we know that by lenses, burning mirrors, photographic cameras and the like the sun may be forced to accomplish results that otherwise would be impossible. Such artificial apparatus30, then, must be the chlorophyll granules in the cells. More strikingly yet, these organs of the cell may be compared to our blast-furnaces, as it is just in the chlorophyll granules that the reduction of carbonic acid and water, according to science, takes place. If these artificial devices, invented and constructed by the lower living units that constitute the cell, did not exist, the sun might shine throughout eternity on water and carbonic acid without producing organic building material.
This material is and must be the product of art. If the forces of inorganic nature spontaneously produced sugar, starch, etc., these substances must have the same quality as our rocks, minerals, etc., of being products of combustion, which in such a supposed[116] case, perhaps, would be made burnable if transformed into water and carbonic acid. We would obtain a creation turned upside down and analogous31 to a world where the bodies we now use as weights would remain unsupported at certain distances from our earth. If we were to use such a body as a weight in a clock, we would have to wind it down instead of up.
Because organic compounds are products of art, living beings find themselves obliged to direct the physical forces to destroy these compounds or restore them to their inorganic state more speedily than these forces would have done if left unaided. The processes of decay, performed by micro-organisms, are as necessary in the economy of life as the reverse processes. Otherwise the earth would soon be so covered by corpses32 that life must cease simply for lack of inorganic raw material. It is true that we might imagine living beings as adapting their organization to this condition and for[117] some time directly utilizing33 the accumulated stores of organic matter; but such periodical interruptions and changes would disturb the continuity of life’s evolution. To avoid this, there is no way open to restore equilibrium except the one in which it is now done.
No effect, whatever its nature, can exist without cause; and further, every effect must have a sufficient cause. If, therefore, we have established that natural forces can no more produce organisms than steam engines, we have also proved that these things would never have come into existence if the organic forces had been left to themselves. Neither organisms nor engines would exist, because they have no cause in the material world. The products of art are due not only to other causes, but the relationship between cause and effect is also different with them from what it is with the products of nature. Every product of nature has its cause in a previous condition of matter. The cause goes before[118] and the effect comes after in time. The connection between cause and effect is so intimate and complete with regard to natural products, that we may trace the series of occurrences backward and forward in time without other limitations than those imposed by a deficient34 knowledge of the qualities of matter. Such a connection between cause and effect has been termed mechanical causality, which reigns35 without exception in the material world.
Of entirely different kind and nature is the series of causes pertaining to the production of objects of art. In their capacity of purpose they are themselves the physical cause of all the work that precedes their birth. When the product of art is finally ready, the effect has then gone before the cause. Such a connection is called teleological36 causality in contradistinction to the mechanical one, where the cause always precedes the effect.
But although the product of art is[119] the nearest cause of its own production, it is not the primary one; it is itself the result, not of a cause to be found in the material world, but of a foreign interference in the mechanical causality, and points therefore to a supernatural ground which, by a closer investigation37, will be found identical with a living will. The will feels the want of other things than those which natural forces can spontaneously produce. Natural products act as incentives38 on the will, spur it to break through mechanical causality so that physical laws by a judicious39 guidance may be forced to produce artificial products that better satisfy the desires of the will. If natural laws could comprehend and judge these things, they would consider them all as miracles, whereas, from the point of view of the will, they are so much the more natural as they are exact expressions of the needs and desires of the will.
But not only the order of cause and effect, even the tie between the two is[120] entirely different in teleological causality from that in mechanical. While the natural product is an effect that cannot fail to appear, the product of art, on the contrary, is an effect that primarily never could be expected, because it has no cause in the material world; but further, if it is forthcoming, the tie between cause and effect is so loose that such a product may be left and will remain in any stage of its production. It may be just commenced, half ready, or nearly completed; be better or worse, be a failure, and so on, whereas the natural product springs forth40 of physical necessity from its cause and never can be different from what it is.
Wills and physical forces then stand against each other as two fundamentally and radically41 different causes. A will may neglect to do what it ought to, may be idle, industrious42, undecided; a physical force cannot leave undone43 what it has to do, can never be called idle, industrious or undecided.
[121]
That man is able to produce objects of art we have sufficient evidence in material invention, from the simple stone-ax up to the most complicated machines. But if man can create products of art he must himself be a supernatural cause, as natural products produce nothing but their own kind. And not only he but also the beings that build up his organism must be supernatural causes, as we have seen that all organic matter ipso facto are products of art.
In all these different forms and species of products of art we possess, therefore, boundless44 masses of obvious and visible evidence that life is not a quality of matter. In order to break through the mechanical causality and introduce into the material world effects which never could be spontaneously forthcoming, life must have a supernatural origin, must be a principle independent of matter.
By resuming the demonstration45 that the materialists had broken off, we[122] arrive therefore at the same conclusion that natural science had already drawn46 before from external observation, and with which the question of the nature of life-force is inseparably connected. The qualities of matter itself demonstrate clearly that spontaneous generation never has been, is not and never will be possible, and the tremendous labor47 spent during centuries to prove this by external observation seems almost a waste of time. We might as well pick out a table full of stones and sit down expecting some of them to undertake a flight around the room, as to expect living substance to come forth spontaneously from dead matter. The intrinsic qualities of matter tell us that only hope for the former occurrence can warrant faith in the latter.
We thus consider it demonstrated that Harvey’s formula is a universal natural law and we may now draw its logical consequences: Life is not a material force; no living being can therefore[123] arise from dead matter; all life has a supernatural origin in a higher immaterial world.
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1
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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3
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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5
materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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7
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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pertaining
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| 与…有关系的，附属…的，为…固有的(to) | |
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transformations
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| n.变化( transformation的名词复数 )；转换；转换；变换 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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everlastingly
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| 永久地，持久地 | |
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15
velocity
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| n.速度，速率 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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17
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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sodium
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| n.（化）钠 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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components
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| （机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分 | |
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combustible
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| a. 易燃的,可燃的; n. 易燃物,可燃物 | |
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inorganic
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| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
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combustion
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| n.燃烧；氧化；骚动 | |
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27
decomposition
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| n. 分解, 腐烂, 崩溃 | |
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starch
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| n.淀粉；vt.给...上浆 | |
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29
disintegrated
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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32
corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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33
utilizing
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| v.利用，使用( utilize的现在分词 ) | |
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deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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reigns
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| n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 )；君主统治时期；任期；当政期 | |
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teleological
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| adj.目的论的 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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incentives
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| 激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机 | |
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judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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41
radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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42
industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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43
undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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44
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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45
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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46
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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47
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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