The Seven Mysteries of Life

by Guy Murchie

  But 5065 works out to be equal to 10110 which, as physicist George Gamow once explained in a book, is a thousand times more than the total number of vibrations made by all the atoms in the universe since it was created. As atoms vibrate about a quadrillion times a second and there are quintillions of them in every speck of dust, the commonest of material particles floating literally everywhere in space, 10110 is an unimaginably big number. In fact it demonstrates conclusively, I'd say, that not even one line of any book or speech can originate purely by chance in this finite universe. There just isn't space or time enough. So something else has to be behind things, somehow guiding them. And that, one might say, is a kind of mathematical proof of divinity - depending of course on your definition.

  Now a similar line of reasoning would apply to life, even to your own life, dear reader - suggesting at least a spark of omniscience in you, as Walt Whitman seems to have intuitively realized when he said that "every cubic inch of space is a miracle" and that miracles are with us everywhere always. For even the coolest logician would have to admit that you are an extremely improbable being. I can safely say this because the improbability of your being here is literally so extreme as to make you an impossibility by any ordinary interpretation of those words!

  To begin with, you are a champion of champions, genetically speaking, because you are the product of an inconceivably complex and diverging web of ancestors, spiraling and branching back for billions of years into the primordial ooze of the proto-Earth, not a single individual of which, man or woman, animal or vegetable, ever failed to grow up to maturity and to beget viable offspring while most other creatures around them, including many of their own brothers, sisters and cousins, faded away and the majority eventually disappeared forever into extinction. This has to be true because of the finite dimensions of Earth and because, if your ancestors hadn't been such top performers that they were 100 percent successful in procreation, obviously your ancestral lines of descent would be broken and you could not exist.

  But this is only the beginning of your improbability. Have you ever considered the odds behind conception, when only one out of tens of millions of sperms succeeds in siring a new offspring? And the comparable extravagance in all eggs, seeds, spores and pollen, where but one individual out of thousands in the case of fish and insects has a reasonable chance to avoid being eaten or lost so it can grow big enough to have little fish or bugs of its own, and where only one of millions of grains of pollen or seeds of an orchid blown on the wind can hope to land where it may procreate? Clearly this tendency to improbability indicates that, reckoning back to your remoter ancestors, the long shots in each generation become ever longer and longer.

  So if we calculate very conservatively that each of your direct ancestors had somewhat less than one chance in a million to be conceived and raised to maturity (as he or she obviously succeeded in doing), your first-generation improbability (something a mathematician could write as 10-6) would still increase backward in time by several exponent numbers in each generation of each line of your descent, multiplying generation by generation to the population limits of your species, thereby reaching in the millennium now ending an improbability number far exceeding 10-110. I chose 10-110 because, as we learned, that is the reciprocal of a thousand times more than all the atomic vibrations of all known space-time. Which, putting it rather mildly, would imply that your conception was inconceivable - and that, if anyone in some wild moment ever got the impulse to call you "impossible" or (more diplomatically) "miraculous," he or she actually had a more-than-reasonable claim to being right!

  Such calculations, which, to my knowledge, have not been disputed, leave no realistic possibility that life on Earth could be random in essence. Nor did Darwin with his "variation and selection" explanation of evolution call it random. Certainly evolutionary selection has to be guided by such criteria as survival value, which is far from random. And even evolutionary variation, depending as it does on factors ranging from genetic combinations to mutations caused by cosmic rays, may be much less random than it seems. In any case, Whatever or Whoever directs the mysterious forces of life and evolution has not yet come fully under the wing of science and is more than liable to be misjudged - if for no reason than that randomness always implies some degree of mystery, while mystery for its part does not necessarily imply any degree of randomness.

  ORIGINS OF SPIRIT

  When you see a tree tossing its branches in the wind, do you think it is tossing them just any old way - at random? Of course it isn't, because the wind has a structure and so does the tree and both are part of the structured earth. And I would say there is an element of purpose there too. Certainly there is in the doe swimming my pond for sheer delight. Surely there is in that star twinkling its message as if straight from eternity. No one knows exactly whence spirit springs but the intuition of William Wordsworth told him that

  One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.

  I like to think spirit is so fundamental that it appeared first in the mineral kingdom. But I'll admit that, even though a stone can be magnetic or radioactive and can get tired, drunk and sick (page 384) and still give a brook its song, while certain molecules may possibly choose where they will lodge in a crystal (page 448) to say nothing of the electron's mystic willfulness inside the atom, it is hard to find the spirit in a mineral, especially if you observe it on the human time scale.

  It's easier with vegetables. We saw how trees send their roots down searching for water and nourishment, which may result in their making enemies of thirsty competitors even of their own species, yet at the same time bosom friends of relatively distant cousins like mycorrhizal fungi. When a pine's main stem is cut off we saw how surrounding branches apparently consult one another to decide which one will rise to take the place of the lost leader. And untold deals are made somewhere every day, every hour, like that between a toadstool called Honey Agaric and a Japanese orchid named Gastrodia elata who traditionally touch, embrace and symbiotically feed each other. Why does the aggressive Agaric, which kills most plants it feeds on, carefully restrain itself in the case of Gastrodia? Could it somehow have become aware of the value in preserving a mutually helpful relationship? Could this discriminating little toadstool that tempers mugging into hugging just conceivably have decided to take a small step upward in the evolution of spirit?

  When it comes to the animal kingdom, the signs are so unmistakable that all doubt is left behind. The moral code of most animals seems to be associated with property, particularly the territory they regard as theirs, and everyone knows that a normal watch dog at his master's gate will attack any suspicious intruder in a righteous rage. Even a cricket who finds and occupies a private crack in the floor will soon regard it as home, his home, defending it with considerable moral ascendancy. In fact crickets have actually been observed always to fight harder on their "home" ground, apparently with the confidence that comes from a feeling of proprietary right, while an intruder is bound to be more hesitant, being clearly in doubt as to what to expect in this strange place. Indeed it turns out that there is a kind of relative morality between rival animals all the way from fish to primates based on comparative values of whatever is being defended, under which code not only does the older inhabitant morally dominate and usually defeat the newer inhabitant but the one with a nest or home has a moral advantage over the one without, the one with a better-kept home an edge over the more careless one, and the one who has eggs or young a definite prerogative over the one with none.

  The territorial sense of fish in tanks has its own moral side and I was surprised to hear, from the late Christopher Coates, who ran the New York Aquarium, that, when you mix big fish with little fish, it makes a lot of difference whether you dump the little fish into the tank of the big fish or the other way around. Because, if you dump the little fish in with the big ones, the big fish assume they are being fed and just gobble them up. But if you pour
water containing big fish into the tank of little ones, the big ones evidently feel they've entered a strange place and have no appetite for the little fish. Yet although any big fish dumped in with little fish may feel they're in the little fish's tank with no proprietary rights at the moment, time soon salves their unease (I wouldn't call it conscience), for within a few hours they are sufficiently "at home" to start feeding on the little fish. Mammals do not need any time at all, however, and probably due to superior intelligence, they resist this fishy code. Which explains why porpoises and whales, introduced into an unfamiliar tank, will devour fish without compunction.

  The strongest animal property right of all, I think, must be the maternal instinct that arms a mother with a kind of divine fury when danger threatens her helpless young, even enabling her to successfully attack a marauder ten times bigger and stronger than herself. But many of nature's moral standards are very different from human ones, if no less rational, for she is broad-minded enough to try out an outrageous variety of plans, schemes and devices, including fraud, and with remarkable consistency she accepts the workable ones, no matter how disreputable, as virtuous. Lying is a common virtue among both animals and vegetables, where camouflage (page 192) is a highly developed art. The well-striped tiger is the good tiger in the same degree that his stripes deceive his prey. And the orchid that masquerades as a wasp (page 365) is the ambassador supreme between kingdoms.

  There is no end to examples, like the ants who seem to feel a stigma associated with those who go to gather seeds but don't find any and return empty-handed. So such ants have been known to hide their shame by pretending they have a seed, often carrying a pebble or chip of wood instead. This substitute is almost always rejected by the inspector ants when they arrive back home but the unlucky gatherers are never admonished for their deceitfulness because, at this level, abstract honesty has not yet evolved a value.

  I've heard it said that animals have no real moral choices in their behavior, but Konrad Lorenz has documented many cases of dogs telling lies. One involved his old dog Bully, partially blind and smuff, who one day failed to recognize him coming in the gate and rushed at him barking ferociously. But, on belatedly realizing who he was, Bully was so embarrassed he couldn't bring himself to admit his error or show he was sorry so, after a second of hesitation, he pushed past his master's legs, through the still-open gate and across the road to a neighbor's gate where he continued to bark furiously as if confronting a dangerous foe despite the absence of anything, man or beast, that could possibly justify it - except his obvious need to conceal his own inadequacy!

  STEPS IN SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION

  How spirit begins and evolves is perhaps the Mystery of mysteries in this universe. I can only surmise that, as it works its way up from below the atom, diffusing imperceptibly into the molecule, gene, crystal, cell, organism, society, etc., it may arise in an animal or a human when he first begins to think beyond his immediate self, say in putting aside a present meal for the future, as when a dog stops gnawing a bone and decides to bury it for some hungrier day. Certainly the self of another time (or place) has less self in it than the self of here and now. To begin with, it is less real, because one cannot be sure it will actually come to pass. Death or disaster may intervene. Secondly, I even if it is prompted more by shrewdness than anything consciously generous, it requires a least a slight degree of self-discipline, which is a vital antecedent of kindness.

  In addition, it involves the insidious question of identity, which, I posit, is a key to comprehension of time. Have you ever considered the extent to which your "youth" exists when you are old? Materially of course you are now no longer composed of the same molecules and atoms that formed your body a decade ago, nor are your ideas and motivations quite the same as they were then. Shirley Temple, who was world-famous as a child movie star in the 1930s, said in the I960s: "I've seen my old films on TV. I look on the 'little girl' which is what I call her, as somebody who isn't me." In a profound sense this is true, and the more removed one's past is in time and place, the more complete is the separation of identities. And what is true of the recordable past is at least as true of the unpredictable future, even though other parts of the future may be identified and forecast with some success and much of the past is already beyond reasonable hope of recall.

  The next spiritual step, after the deferring of a present pleasure for a future one, must be one's first consideration of someone (or something) beyond oneself. If such a thought is for someone only slightly beyond oneself (say, one's Siamese twin or the baby one has just given birth to) it may not require much unselfishness to extend one's conscious care that far. Washing one's newborn son may be both easier and more personal than washing one's own foot. And saving the life of one's mate may be only half a step beyond preserving one's own life, depending on how closely entwined these lives may be. I heard an eyewitness account of a tiny female field mouse who was caught by a five-foot whip snake, which then glided up a tree holding her in its mouth, as she squeaked helplessly. A few seconds later the mouse's mate charged fearlessly to the rescue, going right up the tree and sinking his little teeth in the snake's tail until it turned its head around to confront this menace. But, quickly realizing it could not defend itself with its mouth full, the snake dropped its prey, whereupon the gallant rescuer also let go and both mice scampered off to safety.

  To what extent the whiskered hero could be said to be conscious of the risk he took is debatable, but he certainly cared as much for his mate as for himself and thereby displayed considerable spiritual maturity - indeed a good deal more of it, it would seem, than does the vilest of humans. Beyond the sensitive question of morality in a creature so different from ourselves, however, we may more confidently generalize that spirit progressively polarizes good and evil as the opposite sides of one potentiality. Which would explain why inorganic matter such as a rock practically has to be honest - having no real choice to be anything else while organic life evolves more and more the freedom to cheat or be true. And that in turn says something about the nature of sin. It also explains why the cat is more honest than the dog. Or, in broader terms, why ignorance is more reliable than intelligence. For although the cat prowls and takes cover in order to ambush his prey (tactics that seem devious to a human) he plays a straightforward game according to well-known rules and always lets you know his mood. The dog, on the other hand, being more social, complex and intelligent, is capable of begging, apologizing, fawning, boasting, bluffing or otherwise concealing his true feelings, even from himself.

  It is easy for relatively intelligent humans to misunderstand animals too, including their own pets, and the history of man-animal relations is full not only of sympathy and sentimentality but also of superstition, cruelty, strife, injustice and a surprising amount of bitter litigation in which offending animals have been hauled into court and solemnly charged with the crime of disobeying human laws. Have you heard of the famous trial of the caterpillars held in Valence, France, in A .D. 1585, involving a dozen lawyers and theologians? It lasted for months and ended only when the crawling defendants, who had been apprehended in flagrante delicto, were pronounced guilty and sentenced to banishment from the rich crop they had virtually eliminated to a piece of fallow land from which of course nature soon paroled them into butterflies.

  Precedent for such judicial procedure is thought to date back at least to the Code of Hammurabi of Babylon in the eighteenth century B.C., the underlying concept being that all creatures were created by God for man's use and benefit, man being master of Earth, which was obviously the center of the universe. Most frequent challengers of this venerable code have been the pigs, presumably because they were customarily allowed to roam freely, which often led them into trouble. And when they killed anyone (most often a small child) they could be tried and executed, sometimes actually hanged on the gallows or burned at the stake. But the kinds of creatures prosecuted have ranged all the way from cattle and dolphins down to fish and ants - even occa
sionally vegetables, as when a priest in medieval Burgundy declared an anathema and, in the name of sanctity; excommunicated an orchard because its fruit had tempted children to stay away from mass. And as late as 1906 a "criminal" dog was sentenced to death in Switzerland. Yet none of all the bewildered defendants was ever granted the means to sue humanity for perpetrating on them such devilish cruelties as the wire noose and the steel trap, which seem to me morally worse than anything any animal could hope to devise.

  Despite all man's offenses against other creatures and, it must be remembered, against his fellow man too, fairly continuous spiritual advances are being made around his lingering "blind spots" of pursuing and killing animals for sport, ritual slaughter, inhumane zoos, etc. The animals themselves also participate in this evolution as birdsong supplants pecking in territorial rivalry, victorious stags allow their defeated rivals to retire, chimpanzees are overheard lamenting the accidental death of one of their number and guide dogs daily risk their lives to lead blind humans through dangerous traffic for motives no one has yet satisfactorily explained.

  Even the age-old barbarity of cannibalism includes some spiritual progress along with its religious formalities and taboos. For cannibals have been found to be relatively advanced, possibly eugenic-minded, people, some of whose tribes limit their population by eating babies while others control senility by consuming the elderly. And certain of their more restless societies specialize in eating enemies, while others, better settled, partake mainly of friends - the latter tradition explained by the fact that there is often a strong bond of love and faith between the cannibal and his designated victim. Indeed this relation is not nearly as analogous to the farmer's affection for the goose he is fattening for Christmas dinner as it is a mutual and profoundly religious acceptance of God's will that a sacrifice must be made for the sake of the world to come.