V
POSTULATES
"A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." —
Bacon.
"'What was the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wildfowl?'
'That the soul of our grand-dam might haply inhabit a bird.'
'What thinkest thou of his opinion?'
'I think nobly of the soul, and in nowise receive his opinion.'"
Shakspeare.
As without some common ground it is impossible to reason, I shall take for granted the two following principles: —
I. The Creation of Matter.
II. The Persistence of Species.
I. If any geologist take the position of the necessary eternity of matter, dispensing with a Creator, on the old ground, ex nihilo nihil fit, – I do not argue with him. I assume that at some period or other in past eternity there existed nothing but the Eternal God, and that He called the universe into being out of nothing.
II. I demand also, in opposition to the development hypothesis, the perpetuity of specific characters, from the moment when the respective creatures were called into being, till they cease to be. I assume that each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was, and distinguished it from everything else, however near or like. I assume that such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which distinguish species from species now, were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now, and are as distinct now as they were then. If any choose to maintain, as many do, that species were gradually brought to their present maturity from humbler forms, – whether by the force of appetency in individuals, or by progressive development in generations – he is welcome to his hypothesis, but I have nothing to do with it. These pages will not touch him.
I believe, however, there is a large preponderance of the men of science,52 at least in this country, who will be at one with me here. They acknowledge the almighty fiat of God, as the energy which produced being; and they maintain that the specific character which He then stamped on his organic creation remains unchangeable.
VI
LAWS
" – τον τροχον της γενεσεως." —
James iii. 6.
The course of nature is a circle. I do not mean the plan of nature; I am not speaking of a circular arrangement of species, genera, families, and classes, as maintained by MacLeay, Swainson, and others. Their theories may be true, or they may be false; I decide nothing concerning them; I am not alluding to any plan of nature, but to its course, cursus, – the way in which it runs on. This is a circle.
Here is in my garden a scarlet runner. It is a slender twining stem some three feet long, beset with leaves, with a growing bud at one end, and with the other inserted in the earth. What was it a month ago? A tiny shoot protruding from between two thick fleshy leaves scarcely raised above the ground. A month before that? The thick fleshy leaves were two oval cotyledons, closely appressed face to face, with the minute plumule between them, the whole enclosed in an unbroken, tightly-fitting, spotted, leathery coat. It was a bean, a seed.
Was this the commencement of its existence? O no! Six months earlier still it was snugly lying, with several others like itself, in a green fleshy pod, to the interior of which it was organically attached. A month before that, this same pod with its contents was the centre of a scarlet butterfly-like flower, the bottom of its pistil, within which, if you had split it open, you would have discerned the tiny beans, whose history we are tracing backwards, each imbedded in the soft green tissue, but no bigger than the eye of a cambric needle.
But where was this flower? It was one of many that glowed on my garden wall all through last summer; each cluster springing as a bud from a slender twining stem, which was the exact counterpart of that with which we commenced this little life-history.
And this earlier stem, – what of it? It too had been a shoot, a pair of cotyledons with a plumule, a seed, an integral part of a carpel, which was a part of an earlier flower, that expanded from an earlier bud, that grew out of an earlier stem, that had been a still earlier seed, that had been – and backward, ad infinitum, for aught that I can perceive.
The course, then, of a scarlet runner is a circle, without beginning or end: – that is, I mean, without a natural, a normal beginning or end. For at what point of its history can you put your finger, and say, "Here is the commencement of this organism, before which there is a blank; here it began to exist?" There is no such point; no stage which does not look back to a previous stage, on which this stage is inevitably and absolutely dependent.
To some of my readers this may be rendered more clear by the accompanying diagram: —
See that magnificent tuft of Lady-fern on yonder bank, arching its exquisitely cut fronds so elegantly on every side. A few years ago this ample crown was but a single small frond, which you would probably not have recognised as that of a Lady-fern. Somewhat earlier than this, the plant was a minute flat green expansion (prothallus), of no definite outline, very much like a Liverwort. This had been previously a three-sided spore lying on the damp earth, whither it had been jerked by the rupture of a capsule (theca). For this spore, though so small as to be visible only by microscopic aid, had a previous history, which may be traced without difficulty. It was generated with hundreds more, in one of many capsules, which, were crowded together, beneath the oval bit of membrane, that covered one of the brown spots (sori), which were developed in the under surface of the fronds of an earlier Lady-fern. That earlier individual had in turn passed through the same stages of sporal frond, prothallus, spore, theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, spore, theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, &c. —ad infinitum.
This sounding-winged Hawkmoth, which like a gigantic bee is buzzing around the jasmine in the deepening twilight, hovering ever and anon to probe the starry flowers that make the evening air almost palpable with fragrance, – this moth, what "story of a life" can he tell? Nearly a year of existence he has spent as a helpless, almost motionless pupa, buried in the soft earth, from whence he has emerged but this evening. About a twelvemonth ago he was a great fat green caterpillar with an arching horn over his rump, working ever harder and harder at devouring poplar leaves, and growing ever fatter and fatter. But before that he had one day burst forth a little wriggling worm, from a globular egg glued to a leaf. Whence came the egg? It was developed within the ovary of a parent Hawkmoth, whose history is but an endless rotation of the same stages, – pupa, larva, egg, moth, pupa, larva, &c. &c.
Behold this specimen of Plumularia, a shrub-like zoophyte, comprising within its populous branches some twenty thousand polypes. Every individual cell, now inhabited by its tentacled Hydra, has in its turn budded out from a branch, which was itself but a lateral process from the central axis. And this was but the prolongation of what was at first a single cell, shooting up from a creeping root-thread. A little earlier than this, there was neither cell nor root-thread, but the organism existed in the form of a planule, a minute soft-bodied, pear-shaped worm, covered with cilia, that crawled slowly over the stones and sea-weeds. Whence came it? A few hours before, it had emerged from the mouth of a vase-like cell, one of the ovarian capsules, which studded the stem of an old well-peopled Plumularia-shrub, and which had been gradually developed from its substance by a process analogous to budding. And then if we follow the history of this earlier shrub backward, it will only lead us through exactly correspondent stages, primal cell, planule, ovarian capsule, stem, and so on interminably.
Once more. The cow that peacefully ruminates under the grateful shadow of yonder spreading beech, was, a year or two ago, a gamesome heifer with budding horns. The year before, she was a bleating calf, which again had been a breathless fœtus wrapped up in the womb of its mother. Earlier still it had been an unformed embryo; and yet earlier, an embryonic vesicle, a microscopically minute cell, formed out of one of the component cells of a still earlier structure, – the germinal vesicle of a fecundated ovum. But this ovum, which is the remotest point to which we can trace the history of our cow as an individual, was, before it assumed a distinct individuality, an undistinguishable constituent of a viscus, – the ovary, – of another cow, an essential part of her structure, a portion of the tissues of her body, to be traced back, therefore, through all the stages which I have enumerated above, to the tissues of another parent cow, thence to those of a former, and so on, through a vista of receding cows, as long as you choose to follow it.
This, then, is the order of all organic nature. When once we are in any portion of the course, we find ourselves running in a circular groove, as endless as the course of a blind horse in a mill. It is evident that there is no one point in the history of any single creature, which is a legitimate beginning of existence. And this is not the law of some particular species, but of all: it pervades all classes of animals, all classes of plants, from the queenly palm down to the protococcus, from the monad up to man: the life of every organic being is whirling in a ceaseless circle, to which one knows not how to assign any commencement, – I will not say any certain or even probable, but any possible, commencement. The cow is as inevitable a sequence of the embryo, as the embryo is of the cow. Looking only at nature, or looking at it only with the lights of experience and reason, I see not how it is possible to avoid one of these two theories, the development of all organic existence out of gaseous elements, or the eternity of matter in its present forms.
Creation, however, solves the dilemma. I have, in my postulates, begged the fact of creation, and I shall not, therefore, attempt to prove it. Creation, the sovereign fiat of Almighty Power, gives us the commencing point, which we in vain seek in nature. But what is creation? It is the sudden bursting into a circle. Since there is no one stage in the course of existence, which, more than any other affords a natural commencing point, whatever stage is selected by the arbitrary will of God, must be an unnatural, or rather a preter-natural, commencing point.
The life-history of every organism commenced at some point or other of its circular course. It was created, called into being, in some definite stage. Possibly, various creatures differed in this respect; perhaps some began existence in one stage of development, some in another; but every separate organism had a distinct point at which it began to live. Before that point there was nothing; this particular organism had till then no existence; its history presents an absolute blank; it was not.
But the whole organisation of the creature thus newly called into existence, looks back to the course of an endless circle in the past. Its whole structure displays a series of developments, which as distinctly witness to former conditions as do those which are presented in the cow, the butterfly, and the fern, of the present day. But what former conditions? The conditions thus witnessed unto, as being necessarily implied in the present organisation, were non-existent; the history was a perfect blank till the moment of creation. The past conditions or stages of existence in question, can indeed be as triumphantly inferred by legitimate deduction from the present, as can those of our cow or butterfly; they rest on the very same evidences; they are identically the same in every respect, except in this one, that they were unreal. They exist only in their results; they are effects which never had causes.
Perhaps it may help to clear my argument if I divide the past developments of organic life, which are necessarily, or at least legitimately, inferrible from present phenomena, into two categories, separated by the violent act of creation. Those unreal developments whose apparent results are seen in the organism at the moment of its creation, I will call prochronic, because time was not an element in them; while those which have subsisted since creation, and which have had actual existence, I will distinguish as diachronic, as occurring during time.
Now, again I repeat, there is no imaginable difference to sense between the prochronic and the diachronic development. Every argument by which the physiologist can prove to demonstration that yonder cow was once a fœtus in the uterus of its dam, will apply with exactly the same power to show that the newly created cow was an embryo, some years before its creation.
Look again at the diagram by which I have represented the life-history of this animal. The only mode in which it can begin is by a sudden sovereign act of power, an irruption into the circle. You may choose where the irruption shall occur; there must be a bursting-in at some point. Suppose it is at "calf;" or suppose it is at "embr. vesicle." Put a wafer at the point you choose, say the latter. This then is the real, actual commencement of a circle, to be henceforth ceaseless. But the embryonic vesicle necessarily implies a germinal vesicle, and this necessitates an ovum, and the ovum necessitates an ovary, and the ovary necessitates an entire animal, – and thus we have got a quarter round the circle in back development; we are irresistibly carried along the prochronic stages, – the stages of existence which were before existence commenced, – as if they had been diachronic, actually occurring within our personal experience.
If I know, as a historic fact, that the circle was commenced where I have put my wafer, I may begin it there; but there is, and can be, nothing in the phenomena to indicate a commencement there, any more than anywhere else, or, indeed, anywhere at all. The commencement, as a fact, I must learn from testimony; I have no means whatever of inferring it from phenomena.
Permit me, therefore, to repeat, as having been proved, these two propositions: —
ALL ORGANIC NATURE MOVES IN A CIRCLE.
CREATION IS A VIOLENT IRRUPTION INTO THE CIRCLE OF NATURE.
VII
PARALLELS AND PRECEDENTS
(Plants.)
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding." —
Job xxxviii. 4.
Since every organism, considering it, throughout its generations, as an unit, has been created, or made to commence existence, it is manifest that it was created or made to commence existence at some moment of time. I will ask some kind geological reader to imagine that moment, and to accompany me in an ideal tour of inspection among the creatures, taking up each for examination at the instant that it has been called into existence. Do not be alarmed! I am not about to assume that the moment in question was six thousand years ago, and no more; I will not rule the actual date at all; you, my geological friend, shall settle the chronology just as you please, or, if you like it better, we will leave the chronological date out of the inquiry, as an element not relevant to it. It may have been six hundred years ago, or six thousand, or sixty times six millions; let it for the present remain an indeterminate quantity. Only please to remember that the date was a reality, whether we can fix it or not; it was as precise a moment as the moment in which I write this word.
Well then, like two of those "morning stars" who, when "the foundations were fastened," "shouted for joy," we will, in imagination, take our stand on this round world at exactly – minutes past – o'clock, on the morning of the – th of – , in the year b. c. – . The noble Tree-fern before us (Alsophila aculeata) has this instant been called into being by the creating voice of God. Here it stands, lifting up its columnar stem, and spreading its minutely fretted fronds all around, in a vaulted canopy above our heads, through the filagree work of whose expanse the sunbeams play in a soft green radiance. It has this instant been created.
But I will suppose, further, that we have the power to call into our council some experienced botanist; who is not acquainted, as we are, with the fact of this just recent creation, and whom we will ask to give us his opinion on the age of this beautiful plant.
The Botanist.– "You wish to ascertain the age of this Alsophila. I know of no data by which this can be determined with precision, but I can indicate it approximately. Let us take it in order. The most recent development is the growing point in the centre of the arching crown of leaves. Around this you would see, if your eyes were above the plane, close ring-like bodies, or, perhaps, more like snail-shells, protruding from the growing bud; then young leaves, partially opened in various degrees, but coiled up scroll-wise at their tips, and around these the elegant fretted fronds, which expand broadly outwards in a radiating manner, and arch downwards.
"Now every one of these broad fronds was at first a compactly coiled ring; but it has, in the course of development, uncoiled itself, growing at the same time from its extremity, and from the extremity of each of its formerly wrapped-up pinnæ and pinnules, until at length it has attained the expanse you behold. This process has certainly occupied several days.
"But let us look farther. The outermost fronds that compose this exquisite cupola, you see, are nearly naked; indeed, the extreme outermost are quite naked, being stripped of their verdant honours, their pinnæ and pinnules, and left mere dry and sapless sticks, – the long and taper midribs of what were once green fronds, as graceful as those that now surmount them. Some of them, you see, are hanging downward, almost detached from the stem, and ready to drop at the first breath of wind. Now remember, each of these brown unsightly sticks was once a frond, that had passed through all the steps of uncoiling from its circinate condition. This whole process has certainly occupied several months.
"Look, now, below these withered midribs, lifting up the most drooping of them. The stem is marked with great oval scars; and see, this old frond-rib has come off in my hand, leaving just such a scar, and adding one more to the number that were there before. And look down the stem; it is studded all over with these oval scars. There are a hundred and fifty at least; but I cannot count them nearly all, for towards the lower part they become more undefined, and the growth of the stem has thrown them further apart; and besides, there is, as you observe, a matted mass of tangled rootlets, like tarred twine, which, springing from between the lower scars, increases downwards, till the whole inferior extremity of the stem is encased in the dank and reeking mass.
"You can have no doubt that every one of these scars indicates where a leaf has grown, where it has waved its time, and whence, after death and decay, it at length sloughed away. The form of the uppermost, which are not distorted by age, agrees exactly with the outline of the bulging base of the candelabrum-like frond; the arrangement of the scars is that of the fronds; and you may notice in every scar marks where the horseshoe-shaped plates of woody fibre have been broken off, which once passed into the interior of the stem from the midrib of the frond.
"These scars, then, are ocular demonstrations of former fronds; we may no more doubt that fronds were once growing from these spots, than we may that the green and leafy arches were once coiled up in a circinate vernation. They are the record of the past history of this organism, and they evidently reach far back into time. The periodic ratio of development of new fronds may be, perhaps, roughly estimated at six in the course of a year. Now there are about a dozen unfolded or unfolding, as many withering midribs, and about a hundred and fifty leaf-scars that we can count with ease, not reckoning such as are indistinct, nor such as are concealed beneath the tangled drapery of roots.
"I have no hesitation, then, in pronouncing this plant to be thirty years old; it is probably much older, but it is, at least, as old as this."
Such is the report of our botanical adviser; such is his argument; and we cannot but admit that it is invulnerable; his conclusion is inevitable, but for one fact, which he is not aware of. There is one objection, however, to which it is open – a fatal one; you and I know that the Tree-fern is not five minutes old, for it was created but this moment.
Here is another act of creation. It may be the same day as that of the Tree-fern, or one as remote as you please from it, before or after. A few moments ago this was a great mass of rough, naked limestone, but by creative energy it has been suddenly clothed with a luxuriant mantle of Selaginella. How exquisitely beautiful the aggregation of flattened branching stems, studded with their tiny imbricated leaflets of tender green, bloomed with blue! and how thick and soft the carpet that thus conceals the angles and points and crevices of the unsightly stone! Broad as is this expanse of verdure, covering many square yards without a flaw, and rooted as it is at ten thousand points of its creeping stem, we shall yet find that it is one unbroken structure. Our friend the botanist would infer unhesitatingly that every part of this widespread ramification has originally proceeded from one central shoot, and that several years' growth must have concurred to form this compact mass.
Yet we know that such an inference would be false. The plant has been this instant called into being.
On the summit of this rounded hill is a very different plant from the last. Beautiful it also is, but grandeur and majesty are its leading attributes. It is a dense and massive clump of the Tulda Bamboo. How noble these straight-jointed stems, cylinders of polished green, shooting their points right upwards, and towering to a height of eighty feet! The numerous panicles of tufty blossom are gracefully bending from the summits, and from the tip of every branch, nodding in the breeze. There are scores of the tall stems, as straight as an arrow, beset at every joint with diverging horizontal branches, crossing and recrossing in inextricable confusion. And see, amidst the crowd, there are others as thick and tall, but without a single side-shoot, clothed, however, to atone for the deficiency, in swaddling-clothes peculiarly their own.
These swathed stems are infant shoots, – vigorous and promising children, indeed; these brown triangular sheaths, covered with down, are the clothing of infancy; they increase in number, and are closer together towards the summit of the shoot, where the growing point is rapidly extending. When the stems have attained their full height, these sheaths will fall off, the polished shafts will stand revealed in their glossy beauty, and the lateral pointed branches will at once start forth from every joint, and pierce horizontally through the dense tangled bush.
Now these young shoots do not bear testimony to so great an age as you would suppose. The whole seventy feet of their altitude have been attained within thirty days! But then their massive size and vigour indicate a mature age in the clump. For all the hundred stems that are crowded together in this dense Bamboo-clump are organically united; they are parts of one and the same plant, the root-stock of which has been creeping to and fro year after year, sending up in constant succession its arrowy stems, until it has attained the present magnificence. Many years must have elapsed between the present condition of the grove, and that of the slender blade that shot up from the tiny seed in this spot.
Yes, so you may think. But it is not so, for the great Bamboo-clump has been created in its pride and glory this very hour!
Yonder is a considerable area of land covered with the green blades of young wheat, and very healthy and strong it looks. No, it is Couch-grass! The whole green sward which we see is a single plant; the creeping stem of which has spread its ramifications in all directions beneath the surface of the soil; and still the long succulent shoots are extending in every direction, as shewn by the green leaf-blades. This is a rapidly growing plant, it is true; yet still there must be an accumulated growth of many months here, if not years! No, it was created this morning.
Contrasting with this humble grass, observe that luxuriant Screw-pine. See its singular crown of foliage at the summit of its equally singular stem. Its great prickle-edged stiff leaves grow in long diagonal rows, each sheathing its successor, and alternating with those of the next row. How rich and fragrant an odour is diffused from its crowded blossoms!
Every one of those sword-like leaves is, of course, the record of a period of time. A tree of this size makes a "screw," or imperfect spire, of leaves in about three years; and there are about sixteen pairs of leaves in each screw, which will give us nearly eleven leaves for the development of each season. Now, on the trunk, there are numerous waved lines quite covering its surface, which are the traces of old leaves that have in succession been produced and decayed away; – the trunk is, in fact, composed of these leaf-bases. By counting these, we may obtain then an approximate notion of the age of this plant; – an approximate notion only, because in its young stages the development of leaves probably took place more rapidly than it does now. There are then on this trunk about one hundred and fifty horizontal rows of scars, and each row numbers four leaf-bases, so that the trunk is inscribed with an autographic record of six hundred leaves. If then we reckon eleven leaves as the produce of a single season, and add the four screws which are still flourishing, we shall obtain a result of about fifty-five years as the age of this Pandanus. This, for the reason just assigned, would probably be considerably too much; perhaps, forty years would be nearer the truth.
There are, however, other marks of age here, though they are less definite. The great hardness of the surface-wood, which we perceive on trying to indent it, is an indication of age, as it is produced by the successive bundles of woody fibre, which, year after year, have passed down from each leaf, curving, in their descent, towards the circumference of the stem, and, therefore, constantly augmenting the density of the outer portions.
Another very curious proof of age is seen in the number of aerial roots which descend from various points of the trunk towards the soil. You would at first be inclined to think them posts, which a carpenter had set to "shore up" the tree, as props to prevent its being blown down. And truly this is their purpose; but they are natural adjuncts, not artificial. These thick rods, some of which have not yet reached the ground, have been shot forth in turn from the stem, in order to afford it additional support in the loose sandy soil. And mark, by the way, a beautiful contrivance here. Because the growing tender extremity of the root has to pass through the sun-parched air in its progress towards the earth, there is a curious exfoliation of its extremity, forming a sort of cup, which, collecting the scanty dews, retains sufficient moisture for the refreshment of the spongy rootlet. Now, I say, these supporting roots, since they must have originated from the trunk, after the latter had attained a considerable height, are so many evidences – and cumulative evidences – of age, though their testimony cannot be so well made to bear on a known period as that of the leaf-bases.
Should we not then be amply warranted in asserting this Screw-pine to be many years old, if we were not assured that, as a fact, it has been this instant created?
A phenomenon analogous to that which we have just observed is presented by yonder Pashiuba Palm (Iriartea exorhiza). Its straight arrowy stem has shot up to the height of fifty feet, like a slender iron column. On the summit there is the usual divergent crown of leaves that distinguishes this most graceful and queenly tribe; and at the foot, a tall open cone of roots, strangely supporting the column on its apex.
"But what most strikes attention in this tree, and renders it so peculiar, is, that the roots are almost entirely above ground. They spring out from the stem, each one at a higher point than the last, and extend diagonally downwards till they approach the ground, when they often divide into many rootlets, each of which secures itself in the soil. As fresh ones spring out from the stem, those below become rotten and die off; and it is not an uncommon thing to see a lofty tree supported entirely by three or four roots, so that a person may walk erect beneath them, or stand with a tree seventy feet high growing immediately over his head."
"In the forests where these trees grow, numbers of young plants of every age may be seen, all miniature copies of their parents, except that they seldom possess more than three legs, which gives them a strange and almost ludicrous appearance."53
This tall Pashiuba before us, however, is supported on several scores of roots, in various stages of development, some descending through the air, some already fixed in the soil. As the presence of these, moreover, implies the decay and disappearance of earlier ones, their number and height may be accepted as a fair testimony to the age of the tree; independent of what we might have deduced from the trunk and other sources. (My reader will bear in mind, that, throughout this chapter, I am supposing that we have the opportunity of seeing each organism at the moment following that of its creation.) The Iriartea before us, then, notwithstanding its marks of maturity, is but – a new-born infant, I was about to say, rather – a new-made adult.