As the Unconscious hourly seeks to realise and to retain life in millions of germs, which indeed are soon again, often even at their origin, dashed to pieces, owing to unfavourable circumstances, through the pitiless necessity of inorganic laws, so when first life seethed on the earth’s surface millions of primitive germs may have been nipped in the bud before life succeeded in taking firm footing, as it were, on the earth. But when once it had succeeded in producing one or a few organisms, the Unconscious had freer play from this conquered basis of operations; it could now secure the aid of parental procreation, and by its help maintain and extend the conquered ground with proportionately less effort. For it is manifestly very much easier to draw together the organic substances diffused and distributed in the water about an existing organism than around an ideal point; it is very much more easy to effect the requisite chemical transformations and modifications by assimilation aided by the contact action of a given organism than without such; and it is very much easier to produce the typical form of the cell, with its ever-richer inner articulation, through the simple artifice of cell-division with the help of furrowing, than from amorphous matter.
It needs, then, at all events, an infinitely far less effort 1 of the will, to form organisms by the aid of those already existent, than without the same, just as in the case of a higher animal it needs a far less effort to act on tissue with the help of nerves than without. We may then assume that the same application of force or will, whereby a cell comes to be by means of spontaneous generation, is sufficient to form many millions of cells by cell-division.
But now we have found that Nature altogether is bent upon attaining her ends with the least possible application of force; that she everywhere prefers the setting up of mechanical contrivances for utilizing the inorganic molecular forces actually present to direct intervention; at any rate, however, she tries to limit these interpositions, since in the last resort they are not quite to be done away with, to a minimum of expended force.
Thus we saw (Sect. A. Chap. i. a) that the nervous system of animals is nothing else than such a force-saving machine, which by means of the slight triggers and levers of the brain overcomes hundredweights attached to the limbs. We saw (Sect. A. Chap. iii. v. vi. viii. and C. iv.) a number of contrivances in animals and plants so arranged that the facilitation of stimuli by these provisions, or even their purely mechanical mode of action, rendered special instincts superfluous. Conversely we saw instincts employed to render needless extensive efforts in organic formation, e.g. (B. Chap. ii. and v.), the instinct of sexual selection to achieve an improvement of the race in respect of beauty and otherwise; the next chapter will furnish us with more examples of a like kind, which prove with what delicacy the Unconscious everywhere endeavours to attain its ends in the most mechanical, i.e., least troublesome manner.
From this point of view now likewise sexual generation appears as a mechanism replacing spontaneous generation by an immense saving of energy.
As a rational man does not ride across country when there is at hand a turnpike road, neither does the Unconscious after establishing a nervous system in an animal still effect muscular contraction by direct action of the will on the muscular fibres, nor continue to make use of spontaneous generation when sexual generation is open to it.
This law derived from the nature of spontaneous generation has very recently attained its complete empirical confirmation, in that the microscope has uniformly revealed, where one had formerly supposed spontaneous generation, sexual generation, and at the present day no single case of actual spontaneous generation has been observed, notwithstanding that the microscope has very carefully swept the province of minute life in all directions.
I do not at all dispute that the possibility is at any moment open of establishing spontaneous generation at the present time; I even concede that the negative proof, that now there can be no spontaneous generation, must always remain for experientialism an impossibility; but nevertheless we may well assume that an assertion, in which theory and empirical observation agree, has a considerable probability in its favour.
For the reader not conversant with the interesting facts relating to this subject I add a short notice of the same.
Aristotle believed that most of the lower animals arose by spontaneous generation. A few centuries ago spontaneous generation was assumed for intestinal worms and infusoria, although for a long time voices were heard suggesting the possible overlooking of parental germs. First the modes of immigration and different states of the intestinal worms were scientifically established; then it was shown that infusions boiled for more than five hours, which came in contact only with heated air, gave rise to no organisms. The advocates of spontaneous generation, however, justly replied that the heating of the air must also destroy the capability of the production of organisms.
Schroder and Dusch first showed that a plug of cotton twenty inches in length filtrates the air in such a way that it allows no organisms to arise.—Pasteur examined the germs floating in the air by catching them in gun-cotton and dissolving the latter in ether and alcohol. He found the same to answer in all respects to the otherwise familiar germs of the lowest animals. He also positively proved, that they are the cause of the development of organisms in the infusions, by introducing along with the heated air a small plug of cotton containing germs, and the organisms always appeared, as if the air had had free access. Pasteur even compared by an ingenious method the relative quantities of the germs contained in the air at different localities. Recently Crace-Calvert ascertained by his exact investigations that temperatures of 100° C. do not essentially affect the minute organisms in question;1 that at 149° C. only those which develop in solution of gelatine become incapable of germination, but that for the destruction of the germinal power of the organisms which develop in the other experimental solutions a temperature of 204° C. is requisite. Accordingly the assumption of a spontaneous generation in infusions has been scientifically set at rest once for all.
I will mention one more case, the origination of Monas amyli. A swarm of unicellular infusoria was seen to arise in starch granules, and it was thought that spontaneous generation was being witnessed. But when the history of these creatures was traced farther, one saw them become liberated on the final disruption of the starch granule, each seek a fresh starch granule and completely cover it, expanding after the fashion of the Amœbæ. This thin little skin on the surface of the grain, the animal, which had swallowed the corn, as it were, and now slowly digested it in layers, had previously escaped observation. Now, of course, the origin of the brood was recognised as endogenous increase.
The law of reproduction is so universal in Nature, that not only no case of the parentless origin of an animal or a plant is known to us, but even not a case of the parentless origin of a cell in an existing organism.
If spontaneous generation could occur anywhere, one would certainly expect to find it in a spontaneous arising of cells in the juices of an existing organism, where both the temperature and the chemical composition of organic matter affords the most favourable suppositions conceivable; but in vain. Even within the organism cell only arises from cell.
All sober-minded naturalists allow that, from the negative results of the most careful investigations with our present perfect instruments, there results a high probability for the supposition that spontaneous generation does not take place at the present day. From the probability of this assumption one must however regressively conclude that the spontaneous generation even of the simplest Protozoa must be none so easy and simple an affair, and that for the re-establishment of the same quite other conditions are required than a mere mechanical individuation of existing protein substances. Were it not so, the spontaneous generation of Protozoa from protein-containing fluids must be observable under the microscope with the proper temperature, illumination, ozone-containing air, &c.; but even supposing a case of successful experiment, it would still never appear credible that such a Moner, which always belo
ngs to a well-defined species in virtue of its mode of nutrition and propagation, could arise and functionally persist by the mere play of inorganic atomic forces (comp. also pp. 212, 213 and 291–293), without psychical influences from the Unconscious ideally regulating the mode of this activity.
1 We hardly need remind the reader that wherever the word “soul” occurs in the first two sections of this book, it must not, after the explanation of the last chapter, be understood otherwise than in the sense of the definition here given. If in the earlier sections the monistic view of the soul was less prominent, this only happened because, for the understanding of the matter there treated of, the current conception of the soul sufficed, and by premature insistance on the monistic point of view a proper understanding of the subject by the philosophically untrained reader would have been rendered needlessly difficult.
1 Helleborus niger and Bellis perennis freeze on the occurrence of cold in all stages of florescence, and continue to grow after being thawed, a circumstance which occurs more than once in winters of variable temperature. Grôppert saw expanded flowers for weeks in this state. Of course there is for each species of plant, even for those which bear cold best, a definite limit, the overstepping of which occasions death. According to Cohn’s direct microscopical observations, e.g., cells of Niteüa syncarpa perish on being cooled below − 3° C., whilst the protoplasmic contents of the primordial sac are disorganised by the freezing of the water. Other plants, on the contrary, die even some degrees above freezing-point.
1 When Thomson (speech at the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Edinburgh, 1871) suggests a transferring to our earth of germs elsewhere developed by means of meteoric stones, he has to meet the difficulty that such germs must always be destroyed by the heat produced in cleaving the atmosphere before reaching the earth’s surface, if they had not been previously killed by cold in the mundane space.
1 It might appear to superficial observation as if the resistance which the Unconscious finds in inorganic matter to its organising activity were an instance against the all-unity of the Unconscious. This is, however, by no means the case. We have seen above that the strife and struggle of the individualised natural forces or formations of the Unconscious is a necessary condition for the coming to pass of the objective phenomenal world and for the origin of consciousness in particular (comp. pp. 227, 228); here occurs only a special case of this general truth. As little as an organisation could proceed from mere inorganic matter without an organising principle, so little could the organising principle realise itself in organisms, if it did not find matter pre-existent. The Unconscious must, therefore, previously create a matter in order to be able to create organisms, the substrata of consciousness, and, moreover, a matter subjected to exceptionless laws, because only in such is the setting up of accessory mechanisms possible, which always perform the same tasks. That, however, such a matter, comporting itself according to its own laws, which of itself does not tend to the formation of organisms, opposes a certain resistance to the activity of the Unconscious, which constrains it to the formation of organisms, is self-evident, and it is no wonder that this resistance, varying in amount according to the accidental configuration of the natural forces active at any spot, can under certain circumstances assume such proportions that the Unconscious, interested only in the universal, not in the single case, forbears to master the difficulties that present themselves, since it more easily attains by another path, or attains indeed at other places, often enough for the purposes of the whole process, the same end. (This explains, e.g., abortions in consequence of material disturbances of embryonic development.)—According to these observations, the expression “effort,” if one only keeps aloof from every anthropopathic suggestion, need no longer appear unsuitable for the designation of the degree of the intensity of the will, the application of which is requisite in behalf of the organisation for the overcoming of occasional material resistance.
1 Those capable of resisting higher temperatures are, according to Ferd. Cohn, the germs of Penicillium, whilst according to the same investigator the germs of Bacterium are killed already at 80° C.
X.
THE ASCENDING EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC LIFE ON THE EARTH.
WE have in the last chapter shown the probability of the assertion that the Unconscious expended its energy in spontaneous generation only as long as was necessary, i.e., until reproduction could be substituted for it. From the same first principle of Nature of the greatest possible saving of energy directly follows also the other proposition, presupposed as self-evident in the preceding considerations, that spontaneous generation, i.e., a direct production from unorganised matter, can only have reference to the very simplest forms of organic life; that, on the contrary, for the genesis of higher life-forms the Unconscious will by no means choose the course of direct production, so difficult for the simplest beings, but a mode of origination effected by gradual stages. Not that I would maintain the absolute impossibility of the direct original creation of a higher animal; on the contrary, I have always maintained the Will can do what it will, if it only wills with sufficient intensity to overcome the opposing acts of will. Not that I would deny the theoretic possibility that even within the range of the inorganic laws of Nature, at certain moments of terrestrial development, the Unconscious could have set up a direct spontaneous generation of higher animals; to presume to decide the point were folly. Only this much I assert, that a direct spontaneous generation of higher organisms would have required an enormous application of force, an expenditure of energy which would have infinitely exceeded that requisite for the original creation of the simplest cell; that therefore the infallibly logical in the Unconscious, agreeably to the principle of the attainment of all ends with the least possible expenditure of energy, could not but prefer to the spontaneous generation of higher organisms a mode of production effected by many transitional stages, each of which, besides paving the way for higher beings, served in addition other and independent ends, and at the same time was attainable with a relatively trifling expenditure of force by means of a plastic principle of descent.
If we ask plainly, what would be needed for the spontaneous generation of a higher organism? the answer is: in the first instance, organic substances of not too low chemical composition in sufficient quantity and sufficient concentration. Where, however, are these more easily to be found than in an already existing inferior organism? In any case, therefore, the direct transformation of an already existing inferior organism into a higher one (e.g., of a worm into a fish) would offer fewer difficulties than the spontaneous generation of the latter without the assistance of an existing organism. But here too the difficulties would always be still so great, that an enormous application of the energy of the Unconscious would be required to surmount them; for the already established forms and elaborated organs of the lower organism must for the most part be first annihilated, in order to give place to the corresponding forms and organs of the higher being. This not inconsiderable negative work, of previously annihilating what had been created in the embryonic development of the lower organism, is manifestly altogether avoided if the metamorphosis begins at stages of development so early that these specific forms and organs of the lower stage are never brought to perfection, but in lieu thereof at once those of the higher grade. Strictly then one can only speak in an ideal sense of a metamorphosis, for only the ideal type, which proceeded according to the ordinary course of development from the germ of the lower organism, has yielded to the realisation of a different ideal type, but in reality no transformation, but only an embryonic development has taken place. Even Agassiz, a leading upholder of the distinct creation of species, admits that this creation could only have taken place in the form of ova, and that for the development of these asexually created ova there must at the same time have been created similar conditions to those under which the sexually produced ova now develop, which indeed comes to this, that foster parents, of course from other species, must have
been provided for the ova needing parental care.
Philosophy of the Unconscious Page 71
