but near Holy of Holies. It is on the central Ineffable Presence before the picture, and to which the incense rises, that these supernaturally intense eyes of the cherubs are looking. Santa Barbara, as you will observe, divides her adoration between the Son in the arms of the mother and the Unspeakable Unseen before him. Another kneeling figure looks toward what is within, but points to what is without. Even the eyes of the Son and the mother gather mysterious, measureless strength from the Unseen Ineffable to which the incense rises. To me, for one, that which is exterior in this most celebrated painting of all time is more impressive than that which is interior. If you look on the interior, there in the background, and not noticeable at first, but filling all the ambient air behind the mother and the Son, is a cloud made up of innumerable blissful faces of supernatural beings in eternal youth. But when at Dresden, day after day for a month, I studied the painting, I always forgot these in the Central Presence to which the incense ascends; and I went away always in a kind of trance. I know nothing in art that moves me as much as the Unseen Holy suggested before that picture. Will you follow me long enough to-day, my friends, to find out that this Madonna di San Sisto of Raphael, whose interior suggests an ineffable exterior, is a true analogue of the cell,—God and the soul without, inert matter within,-every movement of the latter pointing to the former as its only adequate cause. Come near enough to this Madonna painting of Almighty God, and you will be convinced that it was the purpose of the Artist to make the interior suggest the ineffable exterior. When we study living matter with the highest powers of the microscope, and under the lead of the best original investigators, what does the latest science see? 1. That nothing that lives is alive in every part. 2. That the substance of every living organism consists of three parts, (1.) Nutrient matter, or pabulum. (2.) Germinal matter, or bioplasm. (3.) Formed matter, or tissue, secretion and deposit. As you stand on some murmurous shore of a tropical sea, and pick up a beautifully coloured shell, with its occupant yet in it, you easily perceive a difference between the living and the not-living part of that organism. No doubt the shell grows; and yet, even while the animal bears it about upon his back, parts of the shell are as truly inanimate as they are when afterward the painted wonder lies on the shelf of your cabinet. The shell grows, but not in every part, if it be of mature size. It increases its bulk chiefly by additions of matter at its edges and on its interior; and these increments are made by a process of growth in the softer parts of the organism. We ourselves do not carry very large shells about upon our persons; but the finger-tips are incased in delicate shells, of which by no means every particle is living. It once has been living; but when you pare matter away from the back of a shell, or from the edge of the fingernail, you find a very great distinction between it and the quick flesh that is touched in a nerve. Four-fifths of the bulk of most organisms, animal and vegetable, is made up of formed matter. Only one-fifth is really alive. Into the centre of every organic cell there flows a current of nutrient matter, or pabulum; and this may be wholly inorganic. It may be gas; it may be a mineral compound; it may be formed material from meats and fruits. In a cell [referring to a figure the speaker drew upon the blackboard] this nutrient matter is first transformed into living matter, and next the living matter is thrown off as formed material, to make the cell-wall. There are two currents in an organic cell, one flowing inward, and conveying nutrient matter with it; the other outward, and bearing with it formed material. In the centre of the cell, by a process that cannot be explained by chemistry or any physical science, the nutrient matter is changed into living matter. At the outer edge of the cell, formed material accumulates, and is in some cases tissue, in some secretion, in some an osseous deposit. You have now, I hope, gentlemen, a distinct idea of the three kinds of matter which are to be found in all living organisms,-pabulum or nutrient matter, bioplasm or germinal matter, tissue or formed matter. There are no living organisms, vegetable or animal, that are not made up wholly of these three kinds of matter. It is only within a comparatively few years that we have been ablé to demonstrate under the microscope the existence of this distinction between the inner portions of the cell and the cell-wall. Why, Professor Huxley himself, down to 1853, considered the core of the cell as of little importance, and as having no peculiar office.1 He has changed his opinion now on that point, as on several others concerning the cell-theory; and this fact is not to his discredit at all, because the microscopical study of living matter is advancing so rapidly, that theories of 1850 and 1860 must often be abandoned. Professor Lionel Beale, who is an accepted authority as to this class of facts, however much his inferences, which I do not _now present to you, may be objectionable to materialists, has made large use of a most important process of staining living tissue by a solution of carmine in ammonia. That particular solution makes red whatever is living in a tissue, and does not colour formed material. When you drench a tissue in that solution of carmine in ammonia, you take it out with all the bioplasts stained red. This discovery has been a source of great advances in our knowledge of living tissues, so many of the ultimate parts of which are colourless, and as difficult as water to dissect optically. Fastening the highest magnifying power upon tissue prepared by this carmine process, what do we see? 3. That germinal points, or bioplasts, are scattered so pervadingly through all organic structures that in no organism is there a space one five-hundredth of an inch square without a germinal point, or bioplast. 1 "The Cell-Theory," Medico-Chirurgical Review, October 1853. We are sure to find, in any piece of living matter of that size, a bioplast that will colour red in a solution of carmine in ammonia. 4. That the germinal points, or bioplasts, are the only living matter. 5. That all formed matter has once been living matter, and so differs totally from inorganic matter. Every particle of your oyster-shell has once been living, growing matter, although it now is dead; and yet, although inanimate, it is not inorganic. The shaggiest back of an oyster is matter of a totally different kind from that of the sand and clay and pebbles of which it makes a couch. Every particle of your muscle, nerve, or bone, has once been a bioplast. I use the word "bioplasm instead of "protoplasm," because it is a more definite term. It means always that germinal substance which has the power of transmuting not-living into living matter, and of movement, of self-multiplication, and of producing formed material. "Protoplasm " is a word that has been applied to so many different styles of matter, that its indefiniteness in present usage is a frequent source of confusion of thought in biological discussions. "Bioplasm and "bioplasts are words which agree well with "biology," the accepted name of one of the greatest of the sciences. 6. That in the cell of an organic tissue the central portion is always a bioplast. 7. That nutrient matter for the bioplasts may consist of inorganic matter, or of formed matter. 8. That the bioplasts convert the nutrient into living matter, and the living into formed matter. 9. That the transmutation of the not-living into the living occurs in the bioplasts instantaneously. It You will read in the older physiologies that all tissues are made up of cells; and that is, of course, true; but you must not suppose that it is the latest doctrine that the cell is the object of supreme interest in living tissue. The cell-wall is formed matter. The bioplast is the unit of growth. Bioplasm may exist without an enveloping wall. may be a bioplast, and not a cell. You may have expected me to say much about cells and the cellular theory; and I am talking about bioplasts and the bioplasmic theory. The theory of bioplasts has superseded the theory of cells, or rather has given to the latter more definiteness; so that now we speak of cells with meanings derived from bioplasts. 10. That the cell-wall is formed matter, and not alive, and not necessary to the work of transmutation affected by the bioplast. 11. That bioplasts always arise from previous bioplasts. 12. That they have the power of self-movement in any direction. 13. That they are capable of self-subdivision. 14. That each portion of a self-divided bioplast has the same powers as its parent bioplast. 15. That, when dead, bioplasts cannot be resuscitated. Let us pause here for a moment to notice leisurely the confusion of thought of those who compare this transmutation of the not-living into the living, with the formation of a crystal. I can form a crystal and dissolve it, and form a crystal again out of the solution. I can take two gases, and mix them, and produce water; and then, by an easy chemical process, I can change the water into these two gases; and I can do this, back and forth, any number of times. But, gentlemen, if a bioplast is once dead, it cannot be resuscitated. Materialists talk about the process of life being a kind of "vital crystallisation," whatever that may mean. Be sure that you hold to clear ideas. Revere the orthodoxy of straightforwardness. I want no philosophy, no platform, no pulpit, no dying pillow, that does not rest on rendered reasons. Owen, who fifteen years ago wrote his great work on the "Anatomy of the Vertebrates," opposed in it Darwinism. He called that system as a whole a guess endeavour." As others were guessing, he himself ventured to guess how the chasm between the not-living and the living might be bridged. Fifteen years ago, Dr. Lionel Beale did not stand as a lion in the way of such guessing. Owen put forward as a possible hypothesis that we shall find out some day that there is "molecular machinery" that accounts for the phenomena of life. He thinks life in its simplest forms may perhaps be compared to the power a magnet exerts when it attracts certain particles to itself, and rejects others. It seems to have the power of selection. You might say that the magnet is feeding itself to see how it draws up to itself metallic dust. But the reply to all that is, You may magnetise and demagnetise your poor iron any number of times; but kill once the smallest living organism, and there is no remagnetising that. You may change your magnet from state to state, as you may change water to gases, and gases to water. You may braid and unbraid the threads of any inorganic whip-lash again and again, but once unbraid any living strands, and there is no braiding them together again for ever. 16. That what the bioplasts effect in the transmutation of nutrient into living matter, and of the latter into formed material, chemistry can neither imitate nor explain. You must not allow yourself to fall into doubt as to the attitude of materialistic philosophers on this proposition. Who is Häckel? He is a materialist. What is a materialist? One who denies that there is any spiritual substance in the universe, and affirms that matter is the only thing that exists. Can Häckel believe in the immortality of the soul? It is a mild statement to say that he must be in grave doubt about it. Can Häckel believe in God? He says in so many words that "there is no God but necessity." What does Häckel affirm concerning the ability of chemistry to bridge the colossal chasm between the living and the not-living? That it is powerless to do so. That it is impotent to explain how inorganic is transmuted into organic matter. There is nothing in chemistry that can produce life. I asked a friend who lately took his degree in chemistry at Gottingen what was thought there about the possibility of producing in the laboratory any parallels to the action of the bioplasts. "We have given up," said he, "the idea that we can make things grow." "Most naturalists of our time," says Häckel," are inclined to give up the attempt to account for the origin of life by natural causes." 1 Du Bois Reymond says, "It is futile to attempt by chemistry to bridge the chasm between the living and the not-living." In the bioplast occurs a change which is a sealed volume to the deepest physical science. Here is the not-living, and there is the living; and instantaneously the change of the former into the latter is effected. You look with your microscope upon the centre of the bioplast, and what do you see? Little germinal points arising in the centre, and enlarging. The bioplast seems to boil bioplasts from its centre. It moves. It divides itself here before our eyes [illustrating on the blackboard]. It throbs. You watch it under your microscope. The viscid mass is throwing out a promontory here and a promontory there, against gravitation, and contrary to all we know of chemical force. Suddenly there come great inlets here and there; and soon your one bioplast has made of itself two bioplasts. Each of the new bioplasts continues to receive nutriment; and in its interior the mysterious transmutation of the not-living into the living, and the preparation of formed material, go on again. Each will divide again; and thus, little by little, we find formed matter woven at the edge of these creeping bioplasts into-what? Nerve, bone, muscle, artery. We find the not-living changed into the living, and formed material thrown off-how? So as to produce all the tissues of the body. Your microscope demonstrates that the little bioplast has not only the throbbing movement, and power of self-multiplication, but of rectilinear movement also. Once this bioplast was here. It threw off formed material; and that formed material flows away behind it as your thread flows from your spindle. It flows away here-as what? As an incipient nerve. But here another group of bioplasts spin, and a thread flows away-as what? As muscular fibre. There you weave your nerve, there your muscle, there your bone, and there your artery. The bioplasts move on; they convert constantly the nutrient material into living matter, and throw off formed material; and when at last this thread is wound, it has a contractile quality. When that is wound, it has the power of transmitting what we call the nervous force; or, when the other is wound, it is the beginning of a bone: when this other, that is the commencement of an artery; or when this other, that is an incipient vein. We stand in awe before this action of the bioplasts as incontrovertibly indicating intelligence somewhere. If you please, when the egg begins to quicken, must not the whole plan of your eagle, or of your lion, be kept in view from the first stroke of the shuttles? It is something to weave a nerve, is it not? It is enough to keep us on our knees to know that this little mass of colourless, viscid, and, under the microscope, apparently structureless matter, can weave osseous, muscular, and nervous fibres. But what if they cannot only spin these different threads, but also weave them into warp and woof? I am putting before you facts that are not controverted at all. Dr. Carpenter adopts these views in the latest edition of his 1 History of Creation, vol. i. p. 327. |