THE WONDER OF LIFE.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17742, 19 April 1923, Page 13

THE WONDER OF LIFE.

"SLOWLY CREEPING

UPWARDS."

By Professor J. Arthur Thomson, in '•John o' London's "Weekly."

It is not altogether clear what ive mean when we call something a wonciiT. But mo mean, at least, that we are face lo lace with something that makes us led the fundamental niystoriousness of Nature. "We say, "This is an electrical phenomenon" ; but we do not know v. hai electricity is. Wo suy. ••Tlii.- in a vital process"; but wo do not iiiu.w ihe secret of life. Given .rniability and contractility, and so 011, we can. give a scientuic description oi sumo activity, but we cannot (as yet, if ever) translate irritability and coiiiactiliry into the dynamics of particles. And whenever, in an animal's doings, a mental aspect is undemaole, we may say, "This is evolved from a kind of behaviour in which the mental aspect appears in much simpler expression" ; hut wher-.' or how the psychical' found its simplest expression wo do not know. Another thing, is true of every wonder—the sprouting corn, tho crocus hi en kin through the sod, the bats in their winter sleep, the return of the migrant birds in spring—when wo get to know it, we feel that our world has more meaning than it had before. A true wonder, not a mere curiosity, takes us out of our depth; but it also gives our world a richer significance. A wonder makes us humble—the in th? air ;;nd the serpent on tho rock arc both too high for us; but a wonder also enriches, it is an epiphany.

Almost Omnipresent Beauty. Among the major wonders is the dominance of beauty in Wild Nature. .Apart from parasites which have surrendered independence, half-made creatures (usually hidden away) and organisms with which man has tampered (,as with prize pigs), beadty is almost omnipresent in Animate Nature. We cannot define it save as the quality which excites in us the entirely distinc tire aesthetic emotion ("a thing of heauty is a joy for ever"); but it seems to be an expression of orderly rhythmic of unified harmonious living. Then- is incipient beauty in many humble, creatures like simple worms and seaweeds; there is almost perfect beauty in creatures, like birds and flowering plants, which have stood the test of time, from which all that is discordant has been eliminated; and between these limits there is growing beauty. But everywhere there is more or less beauty—Nature's seal of aoprova]. r The Quality of Insurgehce. Most living creatures—those that have avoided the drifting life of ease —are vigorous. They are always seeking more satisfaction, more light, more life. They search for new kingdoms to conquer, and will not be baulked. There is a whole family of insects in the open sea—the most unpromising of homes for insects; there are living creatures in hot springs and in salt lakes; there is an abundant animal population in the great abysses in spite of the eternal night, the eternal winter, and the severe rationing. The Arotic tern has been found in the Antarctic Circle —annihilating distance and conquering the seasons in its migrations. The water-spider, though belonging to a terrestrial stock and breathing dry air, has solved the problem of living under the water and rearing a family there. As Goethe said, animals are always attempting the impossible and achieving it. They seem to enjoy going against the stream. And think of the inertia of a big tree of California that survives for 2000 years, or of the wealth oi resources implied in there being at least a quarter of a million backboneless animals named and known! Linkages. Another wonder is surely the worldwide linking of life to life, the establishment of a vast system of interrelations. No creature lives or dies to itself. Cats influence the clover crop and the incidence of the plague in India. , Minnows may check malaria, and the pied wagtail affects "the prosperity of the sheep farmer. Flowers aad their insect visitors have evolved together for ages, and are now fitted together as hand to glove. The circle of an earthworm's life—how many other circles does it cut—e.g., the thrush's, the woodcock's, the hedgehog's, the mole's, the centipede's, the plant's, and man's? There is a wonderful web of life, with a pattern becoming more and more intricate. For the Sake of Others. Self-preservation is a fundamental impulse; it finds expression in many forms of what we have called insurgence. As Spinoza said, a living creature tends to persist in the line of its own being. But alongside of this we must recognise, what is usually underestimated, the amount of time and energy which many animals give to securing the welfare of the young. Tp begin with, "hunger" and "love" were probably not far apart, but they have diverged, come together again, and diverged afresh, many times over. In the outcome, caring for others is, no doubt, persisting in the line of the animal's own being, just as trying to do right is part of the upright man's meat and drink, yet we have to deal with two distinct lines of evolution. We disturb the ant-hill and we see that there is no question of sauve qui peut, for the maternal instinct of the rarely maternal workers prompts them first of all to try to save the young. Below this, we see a brainless animal Jike Murray's starfish sheltering its young ones about its body; and at a much higher level than the ants, we admire the devotion of the nesting and brooding bird. MacGillivrav counted 2379 featherß in the "featherpoke" nest of the long-tailed tit. Highest of all is the solicitous shrewdness with which many a mammal, like the mother otter, educates its young ones in wood-craft; but perhaps the climax is to be found in the self-subordinating mutual aid of gregarious and social animals. Development and Life-history. Another of the magnalia Natura? is development. For who can understand how the whole essence of a complex creature is condensed into a microscopic germ-cell, which enters into intimate orderly union with another equally or more minute, with the result that a new individual life begins? And who can understand how from th« fertilised egg-cell —an implicit or potential organism—there is minted and coined the young creature —an explicit or actualised organism: What was invisible becomes visible; what was inheritance becomes an active individuality. We can follow the process step by step; we are beginning to know a little about its physiology; but the everyday occurrence of the* chick developing out of the egg remains a wonder. Development is still more wonderful when it is circuitous, as often happens, i For in many an insect, for instance, there emerges from the egg an active hungry larva; it feeds and grows and moults; the sequence is repeated several times, and then the creature becomes quiescent and begins to undergo

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its groat change into a winged insect, Th<Tpeculiar feature is the alteration ot the almost every part of the body is scrapped and re-made, u we say that the inheritance was ex- > pressed in the development .of the caterpillar, why then, inside the pupa, a new instalment of the inheritance fcemiis to be expressed, and the outcome* is a butterfly. And then there ar> lonf-drawn-out life-historfes, like of the may-fly, which is.an aquatio larva for two or three years, and aerial adult for two or three evenings. The eel's romance is not lees striking. : Adaptations of Fitness. Every* living creature is a buncße.o! f fitnesses". The mole has a long snout, . a protected eye, no protruding eartrumpet, the shoulder muscles of an athlete, a little keel on its breastbone, a hand turned into a shovel, arfd 60 on through all its body. On the tip of the unhatched. chick's upper jaw there is the so-called egg-tooth, a little hardening of horn and lime. 'On the twenty-first day, as the imprisoned chick becomes restless, ft begins to straighten out its sideways-bent head, and it taps energetically with its eggtooth on the inner surface of the broad end of. the egg-shell. The result is familiar; a door is neatly opened and the chick steps out into the world. The " egtr-tooth- is an effective instrument that is used only once in life, for it fa!k off soon after hatching. What shall we say of the enamel-tipped spues th.it project from a number of vertebne into the gullet of the egg-eating snake D'asypeltis, which makes it practicable to 'break the eggs at a stage where nothing of the precious contents can be lost ? Everywhere we see adan- ' tations—the' long results of time, gradually wrought out—but wopders. The greatest wonder is the progressiven«ss of life. On the whole, as the aees have passed, life has been slowly • creeping upwards. The living creature is a fountain of change, and the novelties that crop up are sifted. The out* come has found its crown—its evolving crown—in Man. , 'g