Picture - Cosmic Polymath

352 DESIGN IN NATURE
composed of three chief sections : the organs of sense are responsible for the various sensations ; the muscles effect
the movements ; the nerves form the connection between the two by means of a special central organ, the brain
or ganglion. . The ganglionic cells, or ' psychic-cells,' which compose the central nervous organ, are the most
perfect of all organic elements ; they not only conduct the commerce between the muscles and the organs of
sense, but they also effect the highest performances of the animal soul, the formation of ideas and thoughts, and
especially consciousness."
It is not necessary to follow further what many will regard as the extravagancies and absurdities of Professor
Haeckel. His theory of life is a bewildering maze of assumption and wild speculation wholly unsupported by
evidence, and shows to what extraordinary straits the mechanical school, to which he belongs, is from time to time
reduced. That school, by denying a Creator, Designer, and Upholder, is forced to take up an interminable line of
impossible positions, which it cannot possibly define, and which it cannot afford to abandon.
Professor Haeckel endeavours to make out that there is no First Cause, no spirit or mind, but only matter ;
that matter is eternal and omnipotent, that inorganic or physical force, and organic or vital force, are essentially
one, and that all matter and force are referable to what he designates the " law of substance," whatever that
may mean.
It may be here stated that Professors Rudolph Virchow and Emil Du Bois-Reymond, two of the foremost
experimenters and thinkers of modern time, who originally supported Professor Haeckel's monistic or matter
philosophy, ultimately abandoned it in favour of the dualistic philosophy where matter and mind or spirit are
regarded as separate entities.
Others scarcely less distinguished who had adopted Haeckel's monistic philosophy also abandoned it on mature
consideration. This is true of Wundt, Karl Ernest Baer, Mr. J. G. Romanes, Oscar Hertwig, &c.
The doctrine of " oneness " is, as has been stated, not borne out by facts in the inorganic and organic king-
doms. It altogether fails to account for hfe, and for the phenomena connected with sensation, perception, consciousness,
and all that is commonly known as intellect or mind. A clear hue can still be drawn as between dead and
hving matter, between physical and vital force, and between insentient, brut matter, and sentient, thinking matter.
Swedenborg divided the universe into two categories : the spiritual or world of causes, and the material or
world of efiects. Newton in hke manner distinguished between the celestial spheres and the Power which made
and set them in motion.
Professors Balfour Stewart and P. Guthrie Tait discuss the problem of the Unseen Universe and the endless
sequence and succession of events. They proceed on the principle that every existing state and condition was
preceded by a pre-existing state or condition. They take a beginning or creation for granted. "While it is permissible,
in the case of the Creator, to separate the creative spirit or force from the matter it produces, regulates, and
directs, it is proper to state that, in the created thing, the matter and force are, as a rule, associated. This is
especially true of the hving creature, where the matter and force (physical, vital, and mental) act and re-act upon
each other ; where the vital and intellectual forces are influenced by the condition of the body (as in animals with
nervous systems) ; where concussion of the brain for the time being destroys the mind ;
or conversely, where the
mind being normal powerfully affects the body. As hfe is super-added to matter and can be withdrawn from it at
death, so mind, as the product of matter and hfe in animals, is liable to temporary or permanent extinction.
Granted that mind, as we know it, is always associated with living matter, the question arises when is mind united
to the hving matter or body ? The reply is at impregnation : when the male and female elements meet and fuse
to form the impregnated ovum. Mind in its potential form is an attribute of hving matter even in its earUest
stages, and is transmitted from parents to offspring in unbroken continuity as life itself is. Sensation, consciousness,
and mind, or their representatives, in varying degrees may be predicated of all animals and certain plants, notably
the insectivorous plants. The coalescence of the male and female sexual elements in animals forms a new being
which includes all the physical and mental pecuharities of the parents. The impregnated ovum, consisting as it
does of two distinct and different elements, forms a single, but not a simple or undifferentiated cell. There is duality
physically and mentally in the impregnated ovum, as the body and brain of both the parents are represented and
are present in a potential form. The continuity of hfe and of the intellectual attributes (be they simple or com-
plex) which collectively constitute mind, run down the ages. Heredity forms the connecting Unk between past,
present, and future generations of hving things. Living matter and mind, or what represents them, have always
been associated. They are coupled with the doctrine of the indestructibiUty of matter and force, and conduct not
unnaturally to the conception of the immortality of the soul. It is very difficult to draw a hard and fast hne as
between matter and force and spirit as we know them. As has been explained, matter shades off by fine gradations
until we reach what is virtually the intangible ether. The division of matter, there is reason to beheve, even goes
beyond the ether, so that substance of one kind or other is assumed to occupy all space. The famihar terms