The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1912. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

New Zealand Tablet, 12 September 1912, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1912. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

T is little matter for surprise that Sir E. Ray SLankester should have declared that ‘ there is nothing new in Professor Schaefer's vision as to the origin of life’; or that Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, as the cables tell us, should have been ‘ good-humoredly _ scornful of Dr. Schaefer’s arguments, which, he says, contain nothing that can be called new.’ Professor Schaefer, of Hamburg, is this year’s president of the British Association, which is now sitting in Dundee; and his views of the origin of life, as set forth in his presidential address, are nothing but the merest re-hash of the materialistic evolutionary theories of Haeckel and his school. ‘ Setting aside,’ he said, ‘ as devoid of scientific foundation supernatural intervention in the first production of life, we were compelled to believe that it owed its origin to evolution.’ The only surprising thing about this pronouncement is the fact that the president of the British Association should have attempted to revive a theory that is now so very largely discredited. In Professor Schaefer’s own country, in spite of Haeckel’s frantic efforts, and in spite, we may add, of his barefacedly faked diagrams, the set is all against materialistic Darwinian evolution as an explanation of the fact and origin of life.-. Dr. Vernon Kellogg, professor in the Leland Standford University, U.S.A., himself an evolutionist, and therefore an unimpeachable wit-, ness, declares, in his recent book on Darwinism To-day that ‘ in the last few years this stream [of scientific criticism running against Darwin’s theories] has reached such proportions, such strength and extent as to begin to make itself apparent, outside of strictly biological

and nature-philosophical circles. Such older biologists and. natural philosophers as von Baer, von Kollicher, .Virchow, Nageli, Wigand, and Hartman and such otters, writing in the. nineties and in the present century, as von Sachs, Eimer, Delage, Hacke, Kassowitz, Cope, Haberlandt, Henslow, Goette, Wolff, Driesch, Packard, Morgan, Jaeckel, Steinman, Korschinsky, and de Vries, are examples which show the distinctly ponderable' character of the anti-Darwinian : ranks.’ The names of these men will, we are aware, mean little to the majority of our readers; but their significance,- at least, may be gathered when it is mentioned that they represent the professors of zoology, of botany, of palaeontology, arid of pathology in the Universities of Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Strassburg, Tubingen, Amsterdam, Columbia University, etc. The followers of Haeckel are in the habit of speaking as if they were the people and all science was with them; and we have given - this impressive list - for the purpose of showing how very little foundation there is for such a claim. s,p v. * - The utterances of many of these men are not merely hostile to Darwinian evolution— are frankly contemptuous. One of them, Dr. H. Driesch, a professor of biology, says; Darwinism now belongs to history, like that other curiosity of our century, the Hegelian philosophy. Both are variations on the same theme — viz., how one manages to lead a whole generation by the nose.’ The same writer speaks of ‘the softening of the brains of Darwinians.’ Dr. Wolff, ‘ a biologist of recognised achievement, of thorough scientific training, and of unusually keen mind,’ in his Kritik der Darwin ’ Schen Lehre, refers disdainfully to ‘ the episode of Darwinism,’ and suggests * that pur attitude towards Darwin should be as if he never existed.’ Dr. E. Dennert, in a paper ‘ largely. given to a gathering together of the anti-Darwinian opinions and declarations of numerous well-known, and reputably placed biologists,’ adds insult to injury by concluding: ‘ We (antiDarwinians) are now standing by the deathbed of Darwinism and making ready to send to the friends of the patient a little money to insure a decent burial of the remains.’ In view of such utterances, a modern American writer hardly over-states the situation when he plainly and pithily remarks: ‘ Men have settled down to the very sane conclusion that the theory of evolution is nothing more than a weariness to the spirit and a burden to the flesh, and that Darwinism has become an intolerable bore.’ It should be noted, also, that the fore-going criticisms were directed against Darwinism proper ;- and Darwin, with all his prepossessions for his revived and revised form of an old hypothesis, and his lack of the logical faculty, was a close and keen observer, and was careful to put forth his theory of evolution merely as a theory. What these critics would have had to say regarding the Grant Allens, Clodds, McCabes, and other ‘ popular ’ scientists, who, feeding upon the . crumbs that fall from the tables-of original investigators, have out-Darwined Darwin, and have elevated what was, and is, a mere hypothesis into a demonstrated fact, ’may be very easily imagined, * c Professor Schaefer followed up his statement of belief with the inevitable appeal—which would be pathetic if it had not by this time become laughable for a ' fresh search for that long-sought but elusive entity, the missing link. As Usual, scientists are just" on the brink of capturing or creating the creature or substance which has been wanted so long. Recent research,’ said the Professor, ‘ had suggested the probability that the dividing line between living and nonliving matter was less sharp than had hitherto been supposed; and chemists would sooner or later be able to produce a living substance similar to that from which allthe existing vital organisms were evolved. The ever-green. confidence of the neo-Darwinian in the final discovery of the half-ape half-man, or the missing link between living and non-living matter, is touching in the extreme. It reminds us of the American story, which we have told before but which is so apt that we tell it again, of an enthusiastic amateur fisherman who

was looking for tarpon in southern waters.. He wrote home to his expectant friends that although he had not seen any thus far, he was quite sure of getting one next day. In fact/ said he, ‘you. may say I have practically caught him,’ The missing link—both that of the man-ape and also the connecting link between living and non-living matter—has been * practically caught' quite a number of times;, but has- always, in the last resort, succeeded in eluding his pursuers. In regard to the link between living and non-living matter the type of missing link specially referred to by Professor Schaefer—the classical instance of its ‘ discovery ' occurred in 1868 and the disciples of the missing link theory have been so persistently ‘ jollied ’ about the case that they must feel like saying with staff

‘ No more o’ that, Hal, An’ thou lovest me.’

In the year mentioned, a thrill of excitement went through the scientific world when Professor Huxley announced the great discovery of the missing link between inert or lifeless and living matter. The missing link was a sticky ooze or slime brought up from the bottom of the sea. It was—with the usual indiscreet —proclaimed to the world as Nature’s grand store of protoplasm — source of all the life that swarms upon the earth. Professor Huxley described it as a ‘ sheet of living matter ’ lining the bottom of the sea; and named it, from Haeckel, Bathyhius Haeckelii. Haeckel minutely figured the beloved Bathyhius in the plates of his most elaborate works. Strauss rested on Bathyhius the central arch of his argument against the supernatural. It was the proud claim of Huxley and Strauss and Hackel (1) that Bathyhius is an organism without organs (2) that it performs the acts of nutrition and propagation; (3) that, with other organisms like itself, it stands at the head of the terrestrial history of the development of life; (4) that it spans the chasm between the living and the not-living; and (5) that it renders belief in miracle impossible. Such were the published claims; and at once an lo triumphs went up from the leaders of materialism. Their exultation was, however, short-lived. Huxley, Haeckel, Strauss, and the rest were in too great haste to wait and ‘check their guess’ or ‘explode their conjecture.’ ‘And the consequence was ’—says a recent authority upon . biology ‘ that in a few years the whole scientific world “exploded” with laughter at what Mivart aptly nicknamed “Huxley’s sea-mare’s-nest.’” The ‘grand store of protoplasm,’ the great ‘ Bathyhius ,’ was proved to beHear/ 0 heavens ! and give ear, O earth ! —nothing more than mere lifeless sulphate of lime, which, when dissolved, crystallised as gypsum ! ‘With the hathyhius,’ , said Virchow regretfully,, ‘disappeared our greatest hope of a demonstration (of the origin of life from matter).’ And Haeckel had called the vanished and derided hathyhius ‘ the main support of the modern theory of evolution.’ * ■ The further statement put forward by Professor Schaefer that ‘Life was purely a matter of chemical interaction, and chemists would sooner or later be able to produce a living substance similar to that from which all the existing vital organisms were evolved,’ is mere tall and empty assertion, which it will be time enough to examine seriously when the chemists have produced, or have even claimed to produce, the ‘ living substance ’ referred to. In the meantime it may be noted that such was not the view of a former president of the British Association, who was entitled to speak with incomparably higher authority than Professor Schaefer on all points in which questions of chemistry are specially concerned. ‘lt is true,’ said Sir Henry Roscoe, in his presidential address to the British Association in 1887, ‘that there are those who profess to foresee that the day will arise when the chemist, by a succession of constructive efforts may pass beyond albumen, and gather the elements of lifeless matter into a living structure. Whatever may be said of this from other standpoints, the chemist can only say that at present no such problem lies within his province. Protoplasm,

with which the simplest manifestations of life are associated, is not a compound, but a structure built up of compounds. The' chemist may successfully synthesize, any of its component compounds, but he has no other , reason to look forward to the synthetic production of the structure than to imagine that the synthesis of . gallic acid leads to the artificial production of gallnuts.’ Even if spontaneous generation were demonstrable—which, so far, it unquestionably ,is not—and even if it were possible for chemists to produce some form of ‘ living substance ’-which thus far. they have certainly never done— facts would not in the least " disprove the need of a Creator and First Cause. Behind spontaneous generation, behind chemical interaction, there are curious affinities, chemical properties, and the ultimate constitution of matter; and the question still arises, Where did these properties originate? Were the organic derived from the inorganic, and the mental from the organic, the question would always remain, Whence the inorganic ? Affinities of matter, we are told, explain all; but the question is still unanswered, Whence come the affinities? * And so we safely conclude that God is not to be shut out of His universe in the name of exact science. On the contrary, science, logically, leads the world back unerringly to the final solution of the puzzles of matter and life — Supreme First Cause, God. True scientists read aright the signs of things. ‘ Give me matter,’ said Kant, ‘ and I will explain the formation of a world; but give me matter only, and I cannot explain the formation of a caterpillar.’ ‘ I cannot say,’ said Lord Kelvin, in a recent declaration, ‘ that with regard to the origin of life science neither affirms nor denies creative power. Science positively affirms creating and directive power, winch she compels us to accept as an article of belief.’ Thirty years earlier Clerk-Maxwell, in concluding his famous lecture before the British Association, spoke thus concerning molecules. They continue this day as they tv ere created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may 'learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him Who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth', but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.’ ’ To these utterances we might add similar testimony, not less emphatic and explicit, from Sir Joseph Dawson, Sir G. Stokes, Dr. Mivart, Professors Stewart and Tait, and many, other noted men of science. We can say to-day with James Russell Lowell: • ‘ God of our fathers, Thou Who wast, Art, and shalt be, when the eye-wise who flout Thy secret ‘presence shall be lost , In the great light that dazzles them to doubt, . We, who believe Life’s bases rest Beyond the probe of chemic test, Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near.’ That, it may be said, is poetry, and so it is; but it is also true science.