The Mechanism of Life

In 1868, Ernest Haeckel speaks of the genius of Lamarck a these words : " The chief of the natural philosophers of France is Jean Lamarck, who takes his place beside Goethe nd Darwin in the history of evolution. To him belongs the nperishable glory of being the first to formulate the theory f descent, and of founding the philosophy of nature on the slid basis of. biology," and adds, " There is no country in lurope where Darwin's doctrine has had so little influence as in 'ranee " Haeckel has but done tardy justice in his discovery f and testimony to the genius of Lamarck.

The spirit of opposition does not seem to have much banged in France since Lamarck's time. In 1907 the Lcademie des Sciences de Paris excluded from its Comptes benches the report of my researches on diffusion and osmosis, ecause it raised the question of spontaneous generation. The majority of scientists seem to consider that the question f spontaneous generation was definitely settled once for all hen Pasteur's experiments showed that a sterili/ed liquid, ept in a closed tube, remained sterile.

Without the idea of spontaneous generation and a physical tieory of life, the doctrine of evolution is a mutilated ypothesis without unity or cohesion. On this point Lamarck Deaks most clearly : " Although it is customary when one jeaks of the members of the animal or vegetable kingdom to ill them products of nature, it appears that no definite con- option is attached to the expression. Our preconceived otions hinder us from recognising the fact that Nature herself ossesses all the faculties and all the means of producing living eings in any variety. She is able to vary, very slowly but ithout cessation, all the different races and all the different >rms of life, and to maintain the general order which we see

The doctrine of Lamarck is frequently misinterpreted, ^e often hear it expressed as " Function makes the organ/' or yen " Function creates the organ." This is equivalent to tying, "Life makes the living being," which is incomprehensible, making of function a sort of immaterial and independent entity which constructs a material organ in order to lodge within it. No such idea is to be found in all the works of Lamarck. He formulates his law in the following terms : " In every animal which is still undergoing development, the frequent and sustained use of any one organ increases its size and power, whereas the constant neglect of the use of such organ weakens and deteriorates it, so that it finally disappears."

In his expression of this law Lamarck insists on the fact that organization precedes function. He affirms only that function, i.e. action and reaction, modifies the organ ; or, in other words, that organisms are modelled by the action of exterior forces acting upon them. It is in this sense only that function may be said to make an organ, but this mode of expression should be avoided, as it is apt to be misunderstood. Astronomy teaches us that our globe was detached from the sun in an incandescent state, and geology asserts that this earth has passed through a period of long ages when its temperature was incompatible with the existence of life. It was only with the cooling of the earth crust that it was possible for living beings to make their appearance. Hence they must of necessity have been produced spontaneously from terrestrial material under the influences of chemical and physical forces. This opinion imposes itself on all who reflect and judge freely. In the same way the doctrine of evolution necessitates as a corollary the doctrine of spontaneous genera- tion. The doctrine of evolution should reconstitute every link in the chain of beings from the simplest to the most compli- cated ; it cannot afford to leave out the most important of all, viz. the missing link between the inorganic and the organic kingdoms. If there is a chain, it must be continuous in all its parts, there can be no solution of continuity.

Evolutionists like Lamarck and Haeckel admit spontaneous generation, not as the most probable, but as the only possible explanation of the phenomenon of life. Lamarck shows us the apparition of living things at a certain epoch of the earth's evolution, and the gradual develop- ment of more complicated forms as the conditions changed on the surface of the globe. Darwin shows how heredity and natural selection tend to accentuate the variations which are favourable to existence. Haeckel demonstrates the parallelism between ontogenesis and philogenesis between the successive forms in the evolution of the embryo and the successive forms of the individual in the evolution of a race. These are great and admirable conquests of the human intelligence, they have

demonstrated the first appearance and the progressive evolution of living beings ; it now only remains for us to explain them. The doctrine of evolution, while enforcing the fact of spontaneous generation and progressive evolution, gives us no hint as to the physical mechanism of such generation. It does not tell us by what forces, or according to what laws, the simpler forms of life have been produced, or in what manner differences of environment have acted in order to modify them. The doctrine asserts the simultaneous variations in organic forms and in the physical influences which produce them, but says

nothing as to their mode of action. The Darwinian theory shows how acquired variations are transmitted and accentuated by natural selection, but it says nothing as to how these varia- tions may be acquired. In the same way we are in entire ignorance as to the physical mechanism of on togenetic develop- ment, the evolution of the embryo. The morphogenic action of diffusion produces osmotic growths of extreme variety. Most of these forms recall those of living things shells, fungi, corals, and algae. The analogy of function is quite as close as the resemblance of form. The study of osmosis, however, is as yet in its infancy, and osmotic productions vary with the physical conditions of chemical constitution, temperature, concentration, and the like. The study of the organizing action of osmosis on organic material has as yet been hardly attempted.

Osmosis produces growths of great complexity, milch more complicated indeed than the more simple forms of living organisms. This marvellous complexity of an osmotic growth may be compared with another fact, the ontogenetic develop- ment of the ovum, a single cell which under favourable conditions of environment may evolve into a most complicated organism. These considerations lead to the belief that the beginning of life has not been the production of a simple primitive form from which all others are descended, but that a number of such primitive forms may have been produced, forms which by a rapid physical development attained a high degree of complexity. Osmotic morphogenesis shows us that the ordinary physical forces have in fact a power of organiza- tion infinitely greater than has been hitherto supposed by the boldest imagination.

When we consider the ignorance in which we still remain as to the phenomena which pass before our very eyes, how can we expect to understand those which occurred in past ages, when the physical and chemical conditions were so immensely different from those which obtain in our own time ? What do we know even now of the physical and chemical phenomena which take place in the unfathomed depths of the ocean, where for aught we know even at the present time the same

process may be going on the genesis of life, and the emergence of living beings out of the inanimate mineral world ? " Even now," says Albert Gaudry, "polyps and oceanic animalculae are building up vast coral reefs and rocks. The oxygen and hydrogen which existed once was water, the oxygen and nitrogen which once made air, the carbon, the phosphorus, the silica and the lime which once were solid rock, now form the substance of living beings. The silica is deposited in the skeleton of a sponge or a radiolaria, the shell of a foraminifera or the carapace of a crustacean, or unites with phosphorus to form the bones of a vertebrate. A very tumult of life has succeeded to the primitive silence of inert matter. Life has invaded the earth, and we see on all sides the inanimate mineral kingdom being changed into a living world. 1 "

The admission that life may have appeared on the earth under the influence of natural forces and according to physical laws arid conditions different from those of the present era throws a vivid light on the study of biogenesis, spontaneous generation, and evolution. The means of research are now indicated, and we have only to study the documents already in our possession in order to know the conditions which obtained when life first appeared on the globe. We must endeavour to reproduce these conditions and to study their effects.

Since all living beings are formed of the same elements as those of the mineral world, the term "organic" 11 as applied to combinations can only be used in order to emphasize the complexity of their constitution. It was formerly believed that these organic combinations were the result of life, and could not be reproduced except by living organisms. To-day many of these organic substances are produced in the laboratory from inorganic materials. In the past history of the globe it is easy to imagine conditions which would facilitate the synthesis of organic substances without the interposition of life. At the temperature of the electric furnace, which was that of the earth at an early period of its evolution, chemical combinations are possible quite other than those obtaining under the present conditions of tempera- ture and pressure. At the higher temperature of the early

geological era, silicides, carbides, phosphides, and nitrides were formed in stable combinations instead of the oxides, silicates, carbonates, phosphates, and nitrates of the present time. These combinations existed on the earth at a time when the conditions of temperature precluded the existence of water in a liquid state. As the temperature cooled, and the water vapour became condensed, it entered into chemical combination with the various rocks, producing organic com- pounds like acetylene, which results from the action of water on calcium carbide. H. Le'nicque has developed a theory as to the formation of various rocks under these conditions, which he communicated in 1903 to the French Society of Civil Engineers.

The chemical evolution of the globe has undergone great changes as the temperature gradually fell and the constitution of its crust altered. As long as the temperature was higher than that at which water can exist, all chemical reactions must have taken place between anhydric substances, elements and salts in a state of fusion. These conditions are very different from those of the present-day chemistry, which is the chemistry of aqueous solutions. We may hope to be able to reproduce the earlier conditions by the experimental study of anhydric substances in a state of fusion.

At a later period, that of the primary and secondary rocks, there was a uniform and constant temperature of about 40 C. The atmosphere was charged with water vapour, and all the conditions were present for the production of storms and tempests. The atmosphere during long ages must have been the seat of formidable and incessant electric discharges ; these discharges are the most powerful of all physical agents of chemical synthesis, and will cause nitrogen to combine directly to form various compounds nitrates, cyanides, and ammonia. Carbonic acid would also be present in abundance and would enter into combination with these nitrogenous compounds. In this way we may imagine that compounds were formed which by some process of physical synthesis subsequently gave rise to vast quantities of albuminoid matter. At that time the seas and oceans contained all those substances which have

since been fixed by the metamorphism of the primitive rocks, or deposited in the sedimentary strata. Most of the elements in our minerals were formerly in a state of solution in these primeval seas, which contained carbonates, silicates, and soluble phosphates in great abundance. As the crust gradually cooled, the terrestrial atmosphere of necessity altered in com- position, and the slow evolution of the atmosphere no doubt also exercised an influence on the development of living beings.

Palaeontology teaches us that the earliest living organism appeared in the sea. The most ancient of living things, those of the primary ages, which were of greater duration than all other ages put together, were all aquatic. We find moreover that every living organism consists of liquids, solutions of crystalloids and colloids separated by osmotic membranes ; and it is significant that the ocean, that vast laboratory of life, is also a solution of crystalloids and colloids. It is evident, then, that we must look to the study of solutions if we would hope to discover the nature and origin of life.

Life is an ensemble of functions and of energy-transforma- tions, an ensemble which is conditioned by the form, the structure, and the composition of the living being. Life, therefore, may be said to be conditioned by form, i.e. the external, internal, and molecular forms of the living being. All living things consist of closed cavities, which are limited by osmotic membranes, and filled with solutions of crystalloids and colloids. The study of synthetic biology is therefore the study of the physical forces and conditions which can produce cavities surrounded by osmotic membranes, which can associate and group such cavities, and differentiate and specialize their functions. Such forces are precisely those which produce osmotic growths, having the forms and exhibiting many of the functions of living beings. Of all the theories as to the origin of life, that which attributes it to osmosis and looks on the earliest living beings as products of osmotic growths is the most probable and the most satisfying to the reason.

secondary ages presented in a high degree the particular conditions favourable for the production of osmotic growths. During these long ages an exuberant growth of osmotic vegetation must have been produced in these primeval seas. All the substances which were capable of producing osmotic membranes by mutual contact sprang into growth, the soluble salts of calcium, carbonates, phosphates, silicates, albuminoid matter, became organized as osmotic productions,

were born, developed, evolved, dissociated, and died. Millions of ephemeral forms must have succeeded one another in the natural evolution of that age, when the living world was represented by matter thus organi/ed by osmosis. The experimental study of osmotic morphogeny adds its weight of evidence in the same direction. When we see under our own eyes the cells of calcium become organized, develop and grow in close imitation of the forms of life, we cannot doubt that such a transformation has often occurred in the past history of our planet, and the conviction becomes irresistible