It is doubtless true that attempts have been made to show that this conclusion is not final, and that there may be resources whereby Nature is able to recoup herself, and to draw upon some bank unknown to us for her missing store. As we have seen, Professor Haeckel simply takes for granted that some such means of recuperation exist and operate, and he is not wholly without countenance from others. Thus, no less an authority than Sir William Crookes addressing the Chemical Society as its president, thus expressed himself:[40]

But it need not be pointed out that if an advocate so eminent as Sir William Crookes is reduced to pleas like this on its behalf, the case for Renovation of Energy must be singularly destitute of anything resembling scientific support. Suppositions which{27} are avowedly hazarded as conjectures, and which must appeal to processes of Nature of which we know nothing, whatever authorship they may boast, have nothing to do with Science, and possess no sort of value for our purpose.[41] It must of course be allowed that we may still be utterly in the dark as to the whole of this question, and that further discoveries may one day completely upset all our present notions. But we are concerned with the evidence which Science has now before her, and with the assertion so confidently advanced that this makes the Law of ceaseless Evolution an indisputable truth. We find, on the contrary, that this Law runs directly counter to the facts as they are at present known to us, and to the conclusions drawn from them by the most authoritative representatives of science.

Nor is it only our own globe and solar system that appear to be thus bound towards an inevitable doom. The eternal rhythm of life and death, of which we have been told as pervading the endless depths{28} of space, has no better title to scientific sanction. Like the minor province which we inhabit, the whole universe, we are assured,—so far as we have means of calculating,—must ultimately arrive at a condition of eternal stagnation,—its component parts being drawn close together by their mutual attractions,—so that motion ceases; while the heat replacing it being equally diffused, becomes as incapable of doing work as water between two pools on the same level is of turning a mill. As the writer lately quoted sums up the matter:[42]

This, however, is but the first of many difficulties which must be disposed of ere the account of the world's genesis which we are considering can pretend to our acceptance on the ground that reason and science proclaim its truth.{29}

VII

He goes on to declare that "The fact of evolution—or, which is the same thing, the fact of continuity in natural causation—has now been undoubtedly proved in many departments of nature," and that, in particular, "throughout the range of inorganic nature" it is "a demonstrated fact."

If this be so, it must necessarily follow that the Laws of Nature, as Science finds them operating, sufficiently explain not only all that happens in our present world, but also all that must have happened while this world was being produced. According to what has already been said, by "The Law of Continuity" no more can be signified than that Continuity is a fact, that the world has actually come to be what it is through the continual operation of just the same natural forces as we find at work to-day. That things did so happen we have not and cannot have, direct evidence; for no witness was there to report. We can but draw inferences from the present to the past, and argue that what Nature does to-day, she must have been capable of doing yesterday and the day before. Only thus can continuity of natural laws possibly be established. It would obviously be vain to{31} argue that we must suppose no other forces ever to have acted than those we can observe, because, for all we know, other conditions may so have altered as to make their results altogether different from any of which we have experience.

It is likewise manifest that if we are to speak of demonstrated facts, and of conclusions placed beyond rational possibility of doubt, proofs must be forthcoming sufficient to compel scientific assent.

And here lies the difficulty. Very much must unquestionably have happened in the course of the world's making for which the Laws of Nature as we find them now acting cannot account, and which, therefore, Science cannot attempt to explain. So we are assured by eminent scientific men,—men, too, who desire nothing more than to find an explanation, but are driven, in search of one, as we have already seen Sir W. Crookes, to plead the limitation of our knowledge, and that there may be capabilities in Nature of which we are ignorant. But it remains always true, that what we do not know is not yet part of Science, and that if our scientific information, so far as it goes, is adverse to the Law of Continuity, it is quite unscientific to bring arguments for the law not from our knowledge, but from our lack of it. Still more unscientific is it to proclaim that Science has pronounced judgment in a sense contrary to that of all the evidence hitherto presented to her.

Amongst the men of Science who testify as above, we may begin with Herr Du Bois-Reymond, an{32} avowed Evolutionist and Materialist, whom Professor Haeckel styles, "the all-powerful secretary and dictator of the Berlin Academy of Sciences."[44] He can be suspected of no prejudices which would prevent him from accepting Professor Haeckel's cosmogony, if only he found the evidence satisfactory. Far from this, however, he declares,[45] that the history of the universe confronts us with no less than seven problems, for which Science has no solution to offer, and some of which he holds to be for ever insoluble. These he styles "Enigmas," and they are:

(1) The nature of Matter and of Force.

(2) The origin of Motion.

(3) The origin of Life.

(4) The apparently designed order of Nature.

(5) The origin of sensation and consciousness.

(6) The origin of rational thought and speech.

(7) Free-will.

The first, second, and fifth of these are in the opinion of Du Bois-Reymond "transcendental," or beyond possibility of solution. The others, in his judgment, have certainly not yet been solved, but perhaps may be solved some day. As to the last, he much doubts whether it should not also be classed as "transcendental."

It thus appears that in the judgment of a competent witness, and one no-wise biassed by preconception{33} or prejudice, so far from it being true that Professor Haeckel's story of the universe is imperiously imposed on us by the results of Science, not one but several great gulfs in the course of that history must have been bridged over somehow, which Science confesses she cannot bridge, so far as her present knowledge goes, that is to say, so far as she is Science at all.

Professor Haeckel, it is true, loudly pronounces Du Bois-Reymond's declaration to be mere "dogmatism"[46] of a "shallow and illogical character," and he undertakes to show that with the help of his own philosophy the enigmas cease to be enigmatical.

How far such a mode of rebuking dogmatism appears convincing, must of course depend on what the reader understands by an argument. Some points already considered may help us to a right estimate of proofs which are based upon "Our{34} conception of substance," or "Our modern theory of evolution," and we shall presently inspect more closely the nature of the difficulties which we are invited so summarily to dismiss. Meanwhile, even though not final or conclusive, the testimony of such a man as Du Bois-Reymond serves at least to prove that it is possible to be thoroughly familiar with Science and her teaching, and yet to believe that as yet she knows nothing at all concerning questions which, as we have been assured, she has conclusively answered. And, as we shall presently see, if Professor Haeckel's account of things be the true one, there are many more scientific men of the first rank who are equally in the dark.

In a word, while according to Professor Haeckel there is in the universe but one Riddle, which he tells us he has solved,—in the opinion of another who is certainly no less entitled to speak in the name of Science, there yet remain seven to which no answer has yet been given, and to three, at least, of which none will ever be found.{35}

VIII

With the first and last of these alone need we at present concern ourselves, for "Force," as Science knows it, is always associated with Matter, and signifies no more in her terminology than that which produces, or tends to produce Motion. On the other hand, we are told,[48] that "The contents of the material universe may be expressed in terms of Matter and Motion."

By "Matter" is understood "Sensible Substance," the stuff composing all of which our senses tell us, and which forms the object of Scientific investigation. What do we know concerning this raw material whereof worlds are made?

As we have seen, Professor Haeckel and his school are ready to tell us. Matter, we are assured,[49] is self-existent{36} and imperishable, "it has no beginning and no end; it is eternity." Together with Ether, it occupies infinite and boundless space. It is in ceaseless motion; and its interminable modifications produce everything that ever was or ever will be. Movement[50] is one of the "innate and original properties" of Matter. So are Sensation and Will,[51] but these, we are warned,[52] are "unconscious."

Obviously, however, it is not enough that these things should be said, they require likewise to be proved; and the question must immediately suggest itself, Whence is proof to come? Not, by any possibility, from observation and experiment. For who can speak, of his own knowledge, to eternity or infinity? The only conceivable supposition is that Science has so thoroughly mastered the nature and properties of Matter here and now, as to be furnished with evidence unmistakably pointing to the above conclusions. Thus alone can she be quoted on their behalf; and it must always be remembered that the philosophy which we are examining is nothing if not scientific.

But, in the first place, is it quite clear of what our philosophers are speaking? They use the term "Matter" as though it represented some one definite thing: but this is very far from being the case.{37}

Therefore, he goes on to urge, the doctrine of the self-existence of Matter, must mean that each several atom is self-existent, or "every atom its own god." How comes it then that they all obey the same "Laws"? How have their various provinces been allotted? Above all, how are they not all the same, but—so far as we know—divided into classes widely different from one another? For, according to our present knowledge,—and we cannot too frequently remind ourselves that upon this alone can any sound conclusion be based,—there are, in round numbers, some seventy different species of atoms, whose diverse qualities are absolutely necessary for the production of the world. Had all atoms been of one kind, we could have had none even of what used to be called the Four Elements,—neither Earth, Air, Fire, nor Water.

But,—apart from this,—What is known concerning this same "Matter"? Has Science so thoroughly fathomed its constitution as to be able{38} to declare that it possesses all the properties we have heard assigned to it,—Sensation and Will, even of the unconscious kind, whatever that may be,—locomotive power,—eternity,—and, in its collective capacity, immensity?

So far from this being the case, scientific men who were most willing, and even anxious, to assign to Matter a foremost, if not the foremost, place in Nature, have done so precisely upon the ground, not of our knowledge, but of our ignorance. No better examples need be sought than Professor Huxley, and Professor Tyndall, who alike agreed, in the words of the latter,[54] "to discern in Matter the promise and potency of every form and quality of life." But Huxley took his stand on the declaration, that we know so little about Matter as to make it impossible to say of what it may not be capable, for we cannot so much as be certain of its existence, and use the term only "for the unknown and hypothetical causes of our own states of consciousness,"[55] while Tyndall described the process, whereby the promise and potency are realized, as "the manifestation of a Power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man."

Speculations thus founded upon the absence of evidence, whatever else they may be, are certainly no part of Science; and when we turn to what, being established by scientific methods, is a possible basis of scientific argument, we find that in every instance{39} it contradicts instead of supporting the assertions we have heard.

To begin with the question of Motion, as being both of supreme importance, and one more open than some others to observation and experiment. According to Professor Haeckel's teaching, "movement is an innate and original property of substance," that is to say of Matter, and in consequence, "Substance is everywhere and always in uninterrupted movement and transformation." It is by thus attributing to matter an inherent determination to move that he meets Du Bois-Reymond's difficulty as to the origin of motion.

But this is in direct opposition to the first of Newton's Laws, which are universally recognized as the most firmly established and unquestionable of all scientific conclusions. This law tells us that a body at rest will continue at rest for ever, unless compelled by some force to move; just as a body in motion will continue to move at the same rate and in the same direction, unless compelled by force to arrest or alter its course. Upon the universal certainty of this law the whole of our Natural Philosophy depends: but it absolutely blocks the way for the idea that Matter has an innate tendency to move itself, which is thus quite unscientific. Not self-movement but Inertia is the property which Science ascribes to Matter.[56] It may further be observed that the idea of inherent motion is absurd{40} and unintelligible; for movement cannot be in more than one direction at a time: so that a mass, or an atom, of Matter could tend to move only by having an intrinsic impulse in a straight line towards some one particular point. If it should tend to move indifferently, in all directions at once, it would remain motionless, each such tendency being neutralized by its opposite.

As to the further claim made on behalf of Matter to be endowed with Sensation and Will, of any description, it must be enough to say that no one has ever pretended to find any evidence whatever to this effect, or to detect the faintest trace of such properties;—and that on the contrary, all experience shows inorganic Matter, (that is, Matter not incorporated in living animals or plants,) to be utterly lifeless and inert. It is a mere abuse and perversion of terms to speak of Science as countenancing any conclusion but that to which such experience points. The attempt to invest Matter with these attributes Professor Tait stigmatizes as "non-science," or "pseudo-science."[57]

In fine, to make us realize not merely how extremely narrow are the bounds of our knowledge, but even how much narrower they may be than we suppose, there enters upon the scene Radium, like the golden apple that came to disturb the harmony of the celestials. What lessons this turbulent and unconventional element will ultimately be found to teach, and how far it will revolutionize the laws of Nature as hitherto accepted, remains, of course, to be seen: but this at least is clear. In presence of it, scientific men find that they are sure of nothing they thought most certain, not of the indestructibility of matter itself, on which is based that Law of Substance which we have seen made responsible for so much.

It had been thought that whatever else might change or perish the atoms of which we have heard, as the ultimate constituents of Matter, were beyond the reach of any vicissitude. "No man," said Dalton, their discoverer, "can split an atom." Thus too Mr. Clodd, while acknowledging that 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]{42}

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:

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."{43}

Consequently, we are told,[61]

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:

"Here," in fact, "we meet the impenetrable secret of creative agency."[62]{45}

IX

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{46} 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.

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{47} 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]

In this manner must we test the Evolution theory, and spontaneous generation as an essential element{48} thereof. We will begin with Professor Huxley's statement of what he styles "the fundamental proposition of Evolution."[72]

That is to say, the supposed nebula was a vast piece of mechanism, of unimaginable complexity, the component parts of which under the influence of such forces as gravitation, heat, chemical affinity, electricity and magnetism, have produced everything that has since appeared on earth, vegetable and animal life amongst the rest. How are we to assure ourselves that such was really the case?

Professor Tyndall has told us that the only scientific method is to prolong the method of nature from the present into the past, taking her observed uniformity for our only guide, and in like manner we have heard it laid down by Professor Romanes, that we must assume as a first principle{49} that the laws of nature are always and everywhere the same, and that by their uniform operation everything is done. It is therefore quite clear that as no man was present when life first made its appearance, to observe and record whence it came, the only way in which we can possibly proceed, without violating every scientific canon, is to argue from what happens now, to what must have happened then,—to show that inorganic matter can in fact generate organic life, and to conclude that the same laws must have worked the same results in the past as they do in the present.

But this is precisely what cannot be done, for one of the most conclusive results of modern research has been to show that in the present world spontaneous generation never occurs, that living things come only from living parents, and that from organic matter alone can the smallest particle of organic matter be derived. Omne vivum e vivo, omnis cellula e cellula, omnis nucleus e nucleo. Upon this point there is now complete agreement amongst scientific authorities, and what is most remarkable, none are more strenuous in upholding the doctrine of Biogenesis,[74] than some of those who with equal vehemence proclaim the doctrine of Evolution for which the occurrence of spontaneous generation is a necessity.

Never, for example, were there Evolutionists{50} more pronounced than Professors Huxley and Tyndall, and they both saw clearly that without spontaneous generation there could not have been evolution such as they maintained. Yet when the occurrence of spontaneous generation, here and now, was asserted by Bastian and Burdon Sanderson, they, following in the wake of Pasteur, repudiated the notion, and Tyndall in particular conclusively disproved the experiments by which it was supported.[75] As Huxley wrote to Charles Kingsley:[76]

A few years later, writing to Dr. Dohrn[77] upon the same subject, he made use of a phrase—which in his mouth expressed the uttermost limit of disbelief: "Transubstantiation will be nothing to this if it turns out true."

In the same year as President of the British Association he chose for the subject of his inaugural address, "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis," and, after a careful examination of the case for each, pronounced the former "to be victorious all along the line."

In spite of all this, however, he assured himself{51} as an Evolutionist that spontaneous generation must once have been not only a possibility but a fact. In the same Presidential address, after piling up evidence against it—he thus continued:[78]

Here we have the whole state of the case put for us in a nutshell. On the one hand, all known facts are against the idea of spontaneous generation, and therefore, so far as she can at present go, the verdict of Science must condemn that supposition. But, on the other hand, the fundamental principle of Evolution cannot be justified unless spontaneous generation has taken place, and accordingly, although Evolution is the very thing which we should be engaged in establishing by the evidence of facts, it is held to be reasonable and scientific to infer that facts which we cannot verify must exist because they are wanted. It is admitted that the requisite evidence is lacking, and therefore we must not go so far as to express belief in the facts: but we may indulge in expectations,—which seem, however, to imply belief in the thing expected,—and meanwhile we may go on believing firmly in the Evolution theory itself, which includes belief in the missing facts. This, we are told, is "philosophical faith." But, to say nothing of what we have heard from others, Professor Huxley elsewhere[79] warns us against{53} faith as the one unpardonable sin: and as we have heard him declare the man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

And as to the expectation which he avowed, there appears to be no slight force in the response of his adversary Dr. Bastian:[80]

It is thus hard to understand how Professor Huxley could profess to justify his expectations by verification, for that the above account of the matter is no-wise overstated we have his own acknowledgment:[81]

Such a witness as Huxley might well suffice, but the question is so important as to make it advisable to call some others, though only a few amongst many who testify to the same effect.

Like his friend and ally Huxley, Professor Tyndall believed that spontaneous generation had once occurred, and denied that it occurs now. As to the former article of his creed he was even more pronounced in his materialism. We have already heard him proclaim that in matter is to be discerned the promise and potency of all terrestrial life. He likewise inclined to believe that not only life but consciousness is immanent everywhere, in the vegetable and mineral no less than in the animal world,[82] and that not merely life and consciousness, but:

Beliefs such as these might be thought to imply that the genesis of life is a simple affair, but Tyndall was no less convinced than Huxley that, as things are, it cannot be obtained without antecedent life{55} on which to draw. Having described the experiments devised to test the matter, he thus concludes:[84]