We may now attempt a formal description of the organism based on the discussions of the previous chapters.34

The organism is a typical constellation of physico-chemical parts or elements.

That is to say, it is an object in nature possessing a definite form, which is the result of the arrangement of its tissues. Each tissue is again an arrangement of cells, and each cell is a complex of chemical substances. The organism therefore resembles, so far as our definition goes, an inorganic crystal. But it is the typical organism that we are considering, and this is a pure conception, for our typical organism does not occur in nature. The organisms that are accessible to our observation are constellations of physico-chemical parts, but these constellations tend continually to deviate from the conceptual arrangement. Progressive variation from the type is something that distinguishes the organic constellation from the inorganic one.

The organism is an entity in which energy-transformations of a particular nature are effected. These transformations raise energy from a state of low, to a state of high potential.

This is the general tendency of terrestrial life, and it is expressed most fully in the metabolism of the green plant. The energy-transformations that are effected here are those in which the kinetic energy of radiation is employed to build up chemical compounds of high potential, from inorganic substances incapable in themselves of undergoing further transformations. The general tendency of all inorganic transformations is towards inertia. In them energy is not destroyed, but it is dissipated: it becomes uniformly distributed throughout material bodies as the un-co-ordinated motions of the molecules of which those bodies are composed, and it ceases to be available for further transformations. The green plant reverses this transformation, and accumulates energy in the form of chemical compounds of high potential. Inorganic processes are those in which available energy becomes unavailable, and this unavailable energy can only become available again if a compensatory energy-transformation is effected. Life is that which effects these compensatory energy-transformations.

The organism is a constellation capable of indefinite growth by dissociation.

That is to say, it is a constellation which reproduces itself in all its specificity. Growth consists in the separation from the organism of a part, or reproductive cell, which divides (or dissociates) repeatedly, each dissociated part growing again in mass by the addition of substances similar to its own, but which are taken from a medium dissimilar in composition to itself. The aggregate of parts so formed then differentiates so that the constellation is reproduced in all its specificity. There is nothing precisely similar to this in inorganic happening. The growth of a crystal consists simply of the accretion of elements similar in nature to those of the growing body, and there is no differentiation.

The organism exhibits autonomy.

It is a constellation which persists in the midst of an ever-changing environment, and the typical organic form remains the same, although the material of which it is composed undergoes continual change. There are inorganic entities which resemble the organism in this respect: the form of a cyclone or atmospheric disturbance, for instance, remains the same even though the air of which it is composed is continually changed. But the form of the organism does not vary strictly with the changes in the environment in which it is placed, for it may respond to an environmental change by a regulation, or compensatory change in form or functioning, the effect of which is to maintain the constellation in all its specificity. The regulation is not a complete or perfect one, for environmental changes do, to some extent, produce changes in the organic constellation, but there is no functionality between the environmental change and the organic response. In inorganic happening a change in one part of a transforming system necessarily determines the nature and extent of the changes that occur in the other parts of the system.

The organism is a centre of continuous action.

It is first of all a part of nature in which energy-transformations continually take place—a description which applies equally well to plants and animals. It is only when we attempt to seek an inorganic system to which this definition would apply that we find how well it differentiates the organic from the inorganic. An inorganic system which transforms energy is either one which tends continually towards stability, or it is a machine made by man for a definite purpose, and it is therefore a system involving a teleological idea. An organic centre of action is one in which energy-transformations proceed without cessation.

In the plant organism the energy-transformations represent, with the exception of the reproductive processes, the whole activity of the organism. In the animal organism they are accessory to regulated and purposeful motile activity, that is, muscular action. The object of this muscular activity varies with the stage of evolution attained by the animal. Its sole object in the lower animal is that of individual or racial preservation. Living in an organic and inorganic environment which is always hostile and tends continually towards its destruction, the whole activity of the organism is directed to the attempt to master this environment: it struggles for its individual existence, and that of its offspring. The activities of man are also these, but they are more than these, for, knowing that physical processes tend continually towards inertia, he seeks to control these processes, and to preserve the instability of nature on which the possibility of further becoming depends.

The activity of the organism, whether it be the energy-transformations of the plant or the motile activities of the animal, are directed and regulated activities. The activity of the organism is not a functional activity in the sense that the activity of a dynamo is a function of the nature of the machine, and of the nature and quantity of the energy supplied to it. The nature of the activity of the organism is regulated autonomously by purposes which it “wills” to carry out.

The organism is a phase in an evolutionary flux.

Categories of organisms—varieties, species, genera, etc.—are fictions. They are arbitrary definitions designed to facilitate our description of nature. They are types or ideas. In constructing them we follow the method of the intellect, and we represent by immobility that which is essentially mobile and flows. Between the fertilised egg and the senile organism there is absolute continuity. Our description of the individual organism is a description of it at a typical moment of its life-history, and this description includes all that has led up to, as well as all that will fall away from, the morphology at this particular typical moment.

Even then the arbitrarily defined organism is only a phase. In defining it we arrest, not only the individual, but also the racial, evolutionary flux. The specific morphology is that of a typical moment in a racial flux. Leading up to it at this moment are all the variations that have joined it with its ancestry, and leading away from it will be all the variations that will convert it into its descendants.

The individual and racial developments are true evolutions. They are the unfolding of an organisation which was not expressed in a system of material particles or elements interacting with each other, and with the elements of the environment, but which we must seek in an intensive, non-spatial manifoldness.

In the evolutionary flux the changes are non-functional ones, that is to say, any phase, whether it be one in an individual or a racial development, is not merely a rearrangement of the elements of the preceding phases, as in the case of a transforming system of material particles and energies. There is inherent, spontaneous variability.

The organism endures.

That is, all its activities persist and become part of its organisation. It does not matter whether or not we decide that characters which are acquired are transmitted, nor does it matter whether or not we conclude that the environment is the cause of these acquirements. Some time or other in the individual or racial history new characters arise by the activity of the organism itself, and these characters either persist in an individual or in a race. They endure. All its activities, even its thoughts, persist and form the experience of the animal—an experience which continually modifies its conduct. In man those true acquirements, the results of education and of investigation, persist as written language, or as tradition, even if they are not inherited.

Duration is not time. The mathematician does not employ, in his investigations, intervals of duration. When he relates something which is happening now to something which happened some time ago he employs the differential co-efficient dy/dx, so that the interval between the two occurrences becomes an “infinitesimal” one. When the astronomer predicts events that will happen some years hence, or describes those that happened some years ago, he is really describing things that are all there at once, so to speak, things which are given. If we unfold a fan, stick by stick, we see the separate members in succession, but they are all there, and we can, if we like, see them all at once.

The more we reflect on it the more we see that mathematical time is only a way in which we see things apart from each other. Things become extended in time as they become extended in space. Whether occurrences capable of analysis by the methods of physics are what we call past or future occurrences, they are all given, in that each of them is only a phase of the others.

Duration belongs to the organism. The past is known because all that has occurred to the organism still persists in its organisation. The future is unknown because it has still to be made. Duration is therefore a vector—something having direction, and the organism progresses out of the past into the future. It grows older but not younger.

Such appears to be the nature of life. Can we discuss the problem of its origin?

Did life originate on our earth? We must first consider what we mean when we speak of an origin. The organic world of the present moment, with all its environment—that is to say, the totality of organisms on the earth, with all the materials which they can utilise in any way, the energy of radiation from which they ultimately derive their energy, and all the parts of the cosmos which interact with them—constitute a system in the physical sense. The present condition of the organic world, that is, the kinds and numbers of organisms, and their distribution, and the distribution of the materials which they can utilise, and the quantity and nature of the energy which is available to them, are the present phase of this system. All the conditions of life in the past, that is to say, the kinds, and numbers, and distribution of organisms, and the quantity and nature of their environment at any time, together formed phases of this system. If there was a time when life, as we know it, did not exist, then the materials and the energies, which were antecedent to life when it did appear, were also a phase of the system. On a strictly mechanistic hypothesis there could be no origin: there could only be a transformation of a system which was already in existence. All that exists to-day was given then. When, therefore, we speak of the origin of life from non-living materials we mean simply a transformation of those materials and energies.

There was a time, it is said, when life could not exist on the earth. For the organism is essentially that aggregate of chemical compounds which we call protoplasm, and this cannot exist at temperatures higher than 100° C., and it cannot function at temperatures lower than 0° C. It requires carbon dioxide, and ammonia or nitrate, as the materials for its constructive metabolism, and there was a time when these compounds could not exist, for they must have been dissociated by the heat of the gaseous nebula from which our earth originated. The organism requires energy in the form of solar radiation of a particular frequency of vibration, and there was a time when the sun’s radiation was different from what it is now. Therefore life did not exist then. Even if we believe that life came to the earth as germs, which existed previously in outer cosmic space, this belief does not solve the problem, which simply becomes transferred from our earth to some other cosmic body.

But life, as we know it, makes use of the materials and the energies which are available to it in the conditions in which it exists. The plant organism obtains its energy from solar radiation because this is the most abundant source of terrestrial energy. The human eye is most susceptible to light of a particular frequency of wave-length, but this is the radiation that is most abundant in the light of the sun. Does this not mean that the organism has merely adapted itself to the material and energetic conditions in which it exists? Does it necessarily mean that because the conditions were very different life could not exist? Protoplasm could not exist at a temperature of several thousand degrees Centigrade, but does that mean that life, which on any hypothesis of mechanism must be described in terms of energy, could not exist in these conditions?

It must have had an origin, says Weismann, because it has an end. Organic things are destroyed, inasmuch as they disintegrate into inorganic things. Organisms die. Thus the organic process comes to an end, and because it comes to an end it must have a beginning. Spontaneous generation of life is thus, for Weismann, a “logical necessity.”

Need this logical necessity exist? The argument clearly implies that life is a reversible process. Organic things become inorganic, and therefore inorganic things must become organic things. The first statement is a fact of our experience, but the second one would only be logically true if we were to postulate that the process of life, whatever it may be, is a reversible process. But we must not postulate this if we are to hold to a physico-chemical mechanism, for it is a fundamental result of physical investigation that all inorganic processes are irreversible: reversible inorganic processes are only the limits to irreversible ones. Physical processes go only in one way, and that organic substance is destroyed to the extent that it becomes inorganic is a particular case of this irreversible physical tendency. Now the mechanism of Weismann must base itself on the concepts of physics and chemistry, and it must postulate the origin of life from non-living substances. Why? Because life is a reversible process, that is, it exhibits a tendency which does not exist in inorganic processes. Clearly the logic is faulty! And must we conclude that life has an end? Weismann himself suggests that nothing in the results of biology indicates that physical death is a necessity: it is rather an adaptation. The soma, or body, is the envelope of the germ-plasm, and exposed as it is to the vicissitudes of an environment which is always hostile, it becomes at length an unfit envelope. But with the reproductive act the germ-plasm acquires a new soma, and it is no longer necessary that the former one should continue to exist as an unfit envelope. Physical death therefore occurs as an adaptation serving for the best interests of the race. The organism need not die, for the germ-plasm may be a physical continuum throughout innumerable generations. Somatic death is only a destructive metabolism: it is a catastrophic metabolism, if we like.

We may legitimately discuss such problems as the origin of the protoplasm of the prototrophic organism, or that of the chlorophyll-containing cell, or that of the nerve-cell. On the mechanistic view each of these conditions is a phase of a transforming physico-chemical system, and it is within the scope of the methods of physical science to investigate the nature of these transformations. But if the argument of this book is sound, then the problem of the origin of life, as it is usually stated, is only a pseudo-problem; we may as usefully discuss the origin of the second law of thermo-dynamics! If life is not only energy but also the direction and co-ordination of energies; if it is a tendency of the same order, but of a different direction, from the tendency of inorganic processes, all that biology can usefully do is to inquire into the manner in which this tendency is manifested in material things and energy-transformations. But the tendency itself is something elemental.