Читать книгу The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer - Gerard John - Страница 24

THE question concerning the origin and nature of Life is of supreme and vital importance not only for those who speak of Evolution as a force or principle by which everything is guided and governed, but also for such as understand by the term no more than a process which they say has actually occurred. Evolutionists of this second class disclaim, with Huxley, any "philosophy of Evolution." They are content to take the world as a going concern, at the farthest point in the past to which, even speculatively, Science can trace it, as that vast primordial nebula of which we have heard.[63] Given this,—assuming the existence of such a nebula, constituted as they suppose,—they believe that the whole subsequent history of the world is fully explained by the uniform action of the same laws of matter which we find in operation to-day. Not only is the establishment of our Solar System, of sun and planets, to be thus accounted for, but likewise the production of life, of the organic world of plants and animals.

Hence it necessarily follows that life must originally have been evolved naturally from lifeless matter, for all are agreed that not only in the nebula, but on the earth when it first started its independent career, life did not, and could not, exist.

There has been [says Virchow][64] a beginning of life, since geology points to epochs in the formation of the earth when life was impossible, and when no vestige of it is to be found.

If the evolution hypothesis is true, [says Huxley][65] living matter must have arisen from not-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.

There was a time [says Tyndall][66] when the earth was a red-hot molten globe, on which no life could exist.

Accordingly, as Professor Huxley acknowledges, spontaneous generation is an evolutionary necessity. Unless such generation can be shown to have taken place, or at the very least unless it can be shown to be naturally possible, the theory which requires it cannot be an established truth. But it is precisely as a scientifically established truth that the doctrine of Evolution is presented to us, so firmly established indeed that we are warned "to doubt it is to doubt science."[67] It presents itself, moreover, as the most precious result of modern research, the appearance of which is as a sunrise illuminating the field of knowledge.[68]

This being so, and it being the first principle of Science that we should take nothing on faith and accept only what can be proved, it is our plain duty to satisfy ourselves, as scientific methods alone can rightly satisfy us, that a doctrine of such paramount importance is entitled to demand our acceptance.

What methods can claim to be scientific, all are agreed. Advances in science, Professor Tait warns us,[69]

come or not, as we remember or forget that our Science is to be based entirely upon experiment, or mathematical deduction from experiment.

Men of science [says Tyndall] prolong the method of nature from the present into the past. The observed uniformity of nature is their only guide.[70]

The man of science [says Huxley] has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.[71]

In this manner must we test the Evolution theory, and spontaneous generation as an essential element thereof. We will begin with Professor Huxley's statement of what he styles "the fundamental proposition of Evolution."[72]

That proposition is [he writes] that the whole world, living and not-living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869[73] with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the breath in a cold winter's day.

That is to say, the supposed nebula was a vast piece of mechanism, of unimaginable complexity, the component parts of which under the influence of such forces as gravitation, heat, chemical affinity, electricity and magnetism, have produced everything that has since appeared on earth, vegetable and animal life amongst the rest. How are we to assure ourselves that such was really the case?

Professor Tyndall has told us that the only scientific method is to prolong the method of nature from the present into the past, taking her observed uniformity for our only guide, and in like manner we have heard it laid down by Professor Romanes, that we must assume as a first principle that the laws of nature are always and everywhere the same, and that by their uniform operation everything is done. It is therefore quite clear that as no man was present when life first made its appearance, to observe and record whence it came, the only way in which we can possibly proceed, without violating every scientific canon, is to argue from what happens now, to what must have happened then,—to show that inorganic matter can in fact generate organic life, and to conclude that the same laws must have worked the same results in the past as they do in the present.

But this is precisely what cannot be done, for one of the most conclusive results of modern research has been to show that in the present world spontaneous generation never occurs, that living things come only from living parents, and that from organic matter alone can the smallest particle of organic matter be derived. Omne vivum e vivo, omnis cellula e cellula, omnis nucleus e nucleo. Upon this point there is now complete agreement amongst scientific authorities, and what is most remarkable, none are more strenuous in upholding the doctrine of Biogenesis,[74] than some of those who with equal vehemence proclaim the doctrine of Evolution for which the occurrence of spontaneous generation is a necessity.

Never, for example, were there Evolutionists more pronounced than Professors Huxley and Tyndall, and they both saw clearly that without spontaneous generation there could not have been evolution such as they maintained. Yet when the occurrence of spontaneous generation, here and now, was asserted by Bastian and Burdon Sanderson, they, following in the wake of Pasteur, repudiated the notion, and Tyndall in particular conclusively disproved the experiments by which it was supported.[75] As Huxley wrote to Charles Kingsley:[76]