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In the great majority of cases, at any rate, the full-grown organism becomes what it is by the absorption of not-living matter, and its conversion into living matter of a specific type.
That great, though incomplete work, "The Theory of the Earth," seems to me to be one of the most remarkable contributions to geology which is recorded in the annals of the science. So far as the not-living world is concerned, uniformitarianism lies there, not only in germ, but in blossom and fruit.
This intussusception, however, is a very different process from that imagined either by Buffon or by Bonnet. The substance by the addition of which the germ is enlarged is in no case simply absorbed, ready-made, from the not-living world and packed between the elementary constituents of the germ, as Bonnet imagined; still less does it consist of the "molecules organiques" of Buffon.
Are they, in short, the direct product of some yet uncorrelated force in nature, changing the dead, the unorganized, the not-living, into definite forms of life? Now this is a profound question, and that it is a difficult one there can be no doubt. But that it is a question for our laboratories is certain.
To put his views into a few words, he conceives that all forms of life originally commenced as Monera, or simple particles of protoplasm; and that these Monera originated from not-living matter. Some of the Monera acquired tendencies towards the Protistic, others towards the Vegetal, and others towards the Animal modes of life. The last became animal Monera.
That great though incomplete work, "The Theory of the Earth," seems to me to be one of the most remarkable contributions to geology which is recorded in the annals of the science. So far as the not-living world is concerned, uniformitarianism lies there, not only in germ, but in blossom and fruit.
It would be superfluous to emphasize further this great outstanding fact that the not-living cannot become the living by any of the processes which we call natural; and it would be presumptuous to attempt to emulate these eloquent words by seeking to emphasize the completeness with which this great Law of Biogenesis confirms the truth of a real Creation; for the supreme grandeur and importance of this law could be only obscured by so doing.
The kingdoms of living matter and of not-living matter are under one system of laws, and there is a perfect freedom of exchange and transit from one to the other. But no claim to biological nationality is valid except birth.
Nor is the value of the doctrine of Evolution to the philosophic thinker diminished by the fact that it applies the same method to the living and the not-living world; and embraces, in one stupendous analogy, the growth of a solar system from molecular chaos, the shaping of the earth from the nebulous cubhood of its youth, through innumerable changes and immeasurable ages, to its present form; and the development of a living being from the shapeless mass of protoplasm we term a germ.
This starts us upon a line of thought which leads to a significant conclusion, namely, that a living thing which seems so distinct and permanent is after all only a temporary aggregate of elements which come to it from the not-living world; existing for a time in peculiar combinations which render life possible, they pass incessantly away from the living thing and return to the inorganic world.
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