Page images
PDF
EPUB

stated, Huxley knows what proof there is behind it, and lays it down before the world in this, his most scholarly production on biology, and his latest, as established science.

2. "Bodies which are unquestionably the equivalents of cells true morphological units are sometimes mere masses of protoplasm, devoid alike of cell, wall, and nucleus."

3. "For the whole living world, then, it results that the morphological unit, the primary and fundamental form of life, is merely an individual mass of protoplasm."

4. "In this no further structure is discernible."

I beg you to notice the accord of all these propositions with those which, in the last lecture, I put before you as the result of Lionel Beale's investigation.

5. "The nucleus, the primordial utricle, the central fluid, and the cell-wall, are no essential constituents of the morphological unit, but represent results of its metamorphosis."

We saw how bioplasm throws off formed material, and how the nucleus is the result of the action of the bioplasm, and not bioplasm the result of the nucleus; and here you find Professor Huxley asserting that the nucleus is a result of the metamorphosis of bioplasm.

6. "Though the nucleus is very constant among animal cells, it is not universally present."

7. "The nucleus rarely undergoes any consideraable modification."

8. "The structures characteristic of the tissues are

formed at the expense of the more superficial protoplasm of the cells."

The structures characteristic of the tissues! What a smooth phrase that is, for the infinity of design in the human constitution, bone, nerve, artery, muscle, and all that makes a plant a plant, or an animal an animal!

9. "When nucleated cells divide, the division of the nucleus, as a rule, precedes that of the whole cell."

10. "Independent living forms may present but little advance from an individual mass of protoplasm."

11. "All the higher forms of life are aggregates of such morphological units or cells, variously modified" (HUXLEY, PROFESSOR T. H., Encyc. Brit., ninth edition, Biology, pp. 681, 682).

12. "The protoplasm of the germ may not undergo division and conversion into a cell aggregate; but various parts of its outer and inner substance may be metamorphosed directly into those physically and chemically different materials which constitute the body of the adult."

13. "The germ may undergo division, and be converted into an aggregate of cells, which give rise to the tissues by undergoing a metamorphosis of the same kind as that to which the whole body is subjected in the preceding case" (Ibid., p. 682).

14. "Sustentative, generative, and correlative functions in the lower forms of life are exerted indifferently, or nearly so, by all parts of the protoplasmic body."

[ocr errors]

15. "The like is true of the functions of the body of even the highest organisms, so long as they are in the condition of the nucleated cell" (Ibid., 685).

16. "Generation by fission and gemmation are not confined to the simplest forms of life. Both modes are common, not only among plants, but among animals of considerable complexity.'

66

[ocr errors]

Throughout almost the whole series of living beings, we find agamo genesis, or not-sexual generation.” le. Eggs, in the case of drones among bees, develop without impregnation” (Ibid., 686, 687).

[After a pause, Mr. Cook proceeded in a lower voice],

When the topic of the origin of the life of our Lord on the earth is approached from the point of view of the microscope, some men, who know not what the Holy of holies in physical and religious science is, say that we have no example of the origin of life without two parents. There are numberless such examples. "When Castellet," says Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's coadjutor, "informed Reaumur that he had reared perfect silk-worms from the eggs laid by a virgin moth, the answer was, Ex nihilo nihil fit,' and the fact was disbelieved. It was contrary to one of the widest and best-established laws of Nature; yet it is now universally admitted to be true, and the supposed law ceases to be universal" (WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, p. 38: London, 1875).

66

"Among our common honey-bees," says Häckel (History of Creation, vol. i. p. 197), "a male indi

vidual, a drone, arises out of the eggs of the queen, if the egg has not been fructified; a female, a queen, or working-bee, if the egg has been fructified."

[ocr errors]

Take up your Mivart, your Lyell, your Owen, and you will read this same important fact which Huxley here asserts, when he says that the law that perfect individuals may be virginally born extends to the higher forms of life. I am in the presence of Almighty God; and yet when a great soul like the tender spirit of our sainted Lincoln, in his early days, with little knowledge, but with great thoughtfulness, was troubled by this difficulty, and almost thrown into infidelity by not knowing that the law that there must be two parents is not universal - I am willing to allude, even in such a presence as this, to the latest science concerning miraculous conception. [Sensation.]

17. "The phenomena which living things present have no parallel in the mineral world" (Ibid., p. 684).

What now, gentlemen, is the conclusion of Huxley from all these propositions that seem to point one way? You notice that his facts are Beale's. You find an explicit agreement here of Beale, of Huxley, of Bain, of Drysdale, of Ranke, and I might say of Carpenter, of Dalton, and of scores of recent specialists. The facts being established, the supreme question as to their interpretation is, — Life or mechanism, which?

:

Beale says life Beale says a principle that cannot be explained by any form of merely physical force. But Huxley says, and be amazed all men who hold

[ocr errors]

the Ariadne clew, "A mass of living protoplasm is simply a molecular machine of great complexity, the total results of the working of which, or its vital phenomena, depend, on the one hand, on its construction, and, on the other, upon the energy supplied to it and to speak of vitality' as any thing but the name of a series of operations is as if one should talk of the horologity of a clock." [Sensation.] You are shocked at this proposition, and therefore I have not spoken in vain. We will consider next week this astounding non sequitur. If Hermann Lotze, the first philosopher of Germany, were on this platform to-day, he, in the name of the axiom that every change must have a sufficient cause, would thus and thus [tearing the paper] tear into shreds the materialistic or mechanical theory of the origin of living tissues and of the soul. [Applause.]

« PreviousContinue »