The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer. Gerard John
the constitution even of atoms may some day be found to be liable to disorder and decay, clearly teaches that, as a practical certainty, we have in them got to something final. Taking one particular kind, an oxygen atom, as a text, he thus discourses:58
It matters not into how many myriad substances – animal, plant, or mineral – an atom of oxygen may have entered, nor what isolation it has undergone: bond or free, it retains its own qualities. It matters not how many millions of years have elapsed during these changes, age cannot wither or weaken it; amidst all the fierce play of the mighty agencies to which it has been subjected it remains unbroken and unworn; to it we may apply the ancient words, "the things which are not seen are eternal."
But now, with the recognition of radio-activity, and the disintegration of atoms into their constituent "electrons" which this is held to evidence, we have changed all that. Such disintegration, it is affirmed, must imply dissolution and death, alike of the atoms themselves and of the universe which they compose. As Sir William Crookes told the physicists assembled at Berlin, June, 1903:
This fatal quality of atomic dissociation appears to be universal, and operates whenever we brush a piece of glass with silk; it works in the sunshine and raindrops, in lightnings and flame; it prevails in the waterfall and the stormy sea.
Matter he consequently regards as doomed to destruction.59 Sooner or later, it will have dissolved into the "formless mist" of "prothyle"60 and "the hour-hand of eternity will have completed one revolution."
Consequently, we are told,61
The "dissipation of energy" has found its correlative in the "dissolution of matter." We are confronted with an appalling sense of desolation – of quasi-annihilation.
It is no doubt true, here again, that such judgments cannot be called final, and that not all scientific men will accept them as they stand. But all alike are forced to agree that our previous notions are completely upset, and that we are compelled to recognize the fact that of these fundamental questions we know far less than the little we seemed to know. What, then, is to be thought of Professor Haeckel's confident utterances, which could be justified only on the supposition that we know everything? And what becomes of the famous Law of Substance, if both its parts are found thus to contradict the conclusion he would draw from it?
The case is thus summed up by the writer of the article just cited:
The discovery of radio-activity is one of the most momentous in the history of science. "There has been a vivid new start" (we again borrow Sir William Crookes' expression). "Our physicists have remodelled their views as to the constitution of matter." The remodelling indeed has hardly commenced… What is undeniable is that the Daltonian atom has, within a century of its acceptance as a fundamental reality, suffered disruption. Its proper place in nature is not that formerly assigned to it, … its reputation for inviolability and indestructibility is gone for ever. Each of these supposed "ultimates" is now known to be the scene of indescribable activities, a complex piece of mechanism composed of thousands of parts, a star-cluster in miniature, subject to all kinds of dynamical vicissitudes, to perturbation, acceleration, internal friction, total or partial disruption. And to each is appointed a fixed term of existence. Sooner or later, the balance of equilibrium is tilted, disturbance eventuates in overthrow; the tiny exquisite system finally breaks up. Of atoms, as of men, it may be said with truth, "Quisque suos patitur manes."
"Here," in fact, "we meet the impenetrable secret of creative agency."62
IX
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE
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 186973 with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the breath in a cold winter's day.
That
Or "primal stuff." This looks remarkably like the old
{
The Nebular Hypothesis itself is, of course, far from being an established certainty, and is not devoid of grave difficulties. Into these, however, it is not necessary now to enter.
Professor Marsh.
Professor Dewar at Belfast, 1902.
Gaynor, p. 102.
Being the year in which this passage was written.