ORGANIC GENESIS.

Primary formation of living beings. — Vital principle.

— Spontaneous generation.

— Scale of organic beings. — Corporeal man.

PRIMARY FORMATION OF LIVING BEINGS.

— There was a time when animals did not exist; therefore, they had a beginning. Each species appeared as the globe acquired the conditions necessary for their existence. This is positive.

How were the first individuals of each species formed? It is understandable that, a first couple existing, the individuals multiplied. But this first couple, whence did it come?

It is one of those mysteries that pertain to the principle of things and about which only hypotheses can be formulated. Science cannot yet resolve the problem; it can, however, at least direct it toward the solution.

— This is the primordial question that presents itself: did each animal species come from a primitive couple or from many couples created, or, if one prefers, germinated simultaneously in various places?

This last supposition is the most probable. It may even be said that it stands out from observation. Indeed, the study of the geological strata attests, in terrains of identical formation, and in enormous proportions, to the presence of the same species at points of the globe very far removed from one another. This multiplication so generalized and, in a certain way, contemporaneous, would have been impossible with a single primitive type.

On the other hand, the life of an individual, above all of a nascent individual, is subject to so many vicissitudes that an entire creation could be compromised without the plurality of types, which would imply an inadmissible improvidence on the part of the supreme Creator. Moreover, if at one point a type can form, at many other points it could equally form, by effect of the same cause.

Everything, then, concurs to prove that there was a simultaneous and multiple creation of the first couples of each animal and vegetable species.

— The formation of the first living beings can be deduced, by analogy, from the same law by virtue of which all inorganic bodies were formed and are formed every day.

As the study of the laws of Nature deepens, the mechanisms that at first seemed so complicated become simplified and merge into the great law of unity that presides over the whole work of Creation.

This will be better understood when the formation of inorganic bodies has been understood, which is the primary step toward that other one.

— Chemistry considers a certain number of substances to be elementary, such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, chlorine, iodine, fluorine, sulfur, phosphorus, and all the metals. Combining, they form the compound bodies: the oxides, the acids, the alkalis, the salts, and the innumerable varieties that result from the combination of these.

The combination of two bodies to form a third requires a special concurrence of circumstances: whether a certain degree of heat, of dryness, or of humidity; whether movement or repose; whether an electric current, etc. If these circumstances are not present, the combination will not take place.

— When there is combination, the component bodies lose their characteristic properties; while the compound that results from them acquires others, different from those of the former; thus, for example, oxygen and hydrogen, which are invisible gases, chemically combined form water, which is liquid, solid, or vaporous, according to the temperature. In water, properly speaking, there is no longer either oxygen or hydrogen, but a new body. This water being decomposed, the two gases, becoming free, recover their properties: there is no longer water. The same quantity of this liquid can thus be alternately decomposed and recomposed, ad infinitum.

— The composition and decomposition of bodies occur by virtue of the degree of affinity that the elementary principles maintain among themselves. The formation of water, for example, results from the reciprocal affinity that exists between oxygen and hydrogen; but if we put in contact with water a body that has more affinity with oxygen than oxygen has with hydrogen, the water decomposes: the oxygen is absorbed and the hydrogen is freed. There will no longer be water.

— Compound bodies always form in definite proportions, that is, by the combination of a certain quantity of the constituent principles. Thus, to form water, one part of oxygen and two of hydrogen are necessary. If two parts of oxygen are combined with two of hydrogen, instead of water one will have the deutoxide of hydrogen, a corrosive liquid, formed, however, of the same elements that enter into the composition of water, but in another proportion.

— Such, in a few words, is the law that presides over the formation of all the bodies of Nature. The innumerable variety of them results from a small number of elementary principles combined in different proportions.

For example: oxygen, combined in certain proportions with carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, forms carbonic, sulfuric, phosphoric acids; oxygen and iron form iron oxide or rust; oxygen and lead, both harmless, give rise to lead oxides, such as litharge, white lead, red lead, which are poisonous. Oxygen, with the metals called calcium, sodium, potassium, forms lime, soda, potash. Lime, united with carbonic acid, forms the carbonates of lime or limestones, such as marble, chalk, the stalactites of caves; united with sulfuric acid, it forms calcium sulfate or gypsum and alabaster; with phosphoric acid, the phosphate of lime, the solid base of bones; chlorine and hydrogen form hydrochloric or muriatic acid; chlorine and sodium form sodium chloride or sea salt.

— All these combinations and thousands of others are obtained artificially, in small quantities, in chemistry laboratories; they operate on a large scale in the great laboratory of Nature.

At its origin, the Earth did not contain these matters in combination, but only, volatilized, their constitutive principles. When the calcareous and other earths, become stony with time, deposited on its surface, those matters did not exist entirely formed; but in the air were found, in a gaseous state, all the primitive substances. Precipitated by effect of the cooling, these substances, under the sway of favorable circumstances, combined according to the degree of their molecular affinities. It was then that the diverse varieties of carbonates, of sulfates, etc., were formed, at first dissolved in the waters, then deposited on the surface of the soil.

Let us suppose that, by some cause, the Earth returned to the primitive state of incandescence: everything would decompose; the elements would separate; all the fusible substances would melt; all those that are volatilizable would volatilize. Then, another cooling would determine a new precipitation and the old combinations would form anew.

— These considerations prove how necessary Chemistry was for the understanding of Genesis.

Before the laws of molecular affinity were known, it was not possible to understand the formation of the Earth. This science cast great light on the question, as did Astronomy and Geology, from other points of view.

— In the formation of solid bodies, one of the most notable phenomena is that of crystallization, which consists in the regular form that certain substances assume in passing from the liquid or gaseous state to the solid state. This form, which varies according to the nature of the substance, is generally that of geometric solids, such as the prism, the rhomboid, the cube, the pyramid. Everyone knows the crystals of rock candy; the crystals of rock, or crystallized silica, are prisms of six faces that terminate in an equally hexagonal pyramid. The diamond is pure carbon, or crystallized coal. The designs that in winter are produced on windowpanes are due to the crystallization of water vapor during freezing, in the form of prismatic needles.

The regular arrangement of the crystals corresponds to the particular form of the molecules of each body. These particles, infinitely small to us, but which do not on that account cease to occupy a certain space, drawn toward one another by molecular attraction, arrange and juxtapose themselves as their forms require, in such a way that each takes its place around the nucleus or first center of attraction and constitutes a symmetrical whole.

Crystallization operates only in certain favorable circumstances, outside of which it cannot take place. The degree of temperature and absolute repose are essential conditions. It is understandable that a very strong heat, keeping the molecules apart, would not permit them to condense, and that agitation, making a symmetrical arrangement impossible for them, would not allow them to form anything but a confused and irregular mass, whence the absence of crystallization properly speaking.

— The law that presides over the formation of minerals leads naturally to the formation of organic bodies.

Chemical analysis shows that all vegetable and animal substances are composed of the same elements as inorganic bodies. Of these elements, it is oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon that play the principal role. The others enter accessorily.

As in the mineral kingdom, the difference of proportions in the combination of the said elements produces all the varieties of organic substances and their diverse properties, such as: the muscles, the bones, the blood, the bile, the nerves, the cerebral matter, the fat, in animals; the sap, the wood, the leaves, the fruits, the essences, the oils, the resins, etc., in vegetables.

Thus, in the formation of animals and plants, no special body enters that is not equally found in the mineral kingdom. n

— A few common examples will give an understanding of the transformations that operate in the organic kingdom, by the mere modification of the constitutive elements.

In the juice of the grape, there is no wine, nor alcohol, but only water and sugar. When the juice becomes ripe and the conditions are propitious, there is produced in it an intimate work to which is given the name of fermentation. By this work, a part of the sugar decomposes; the oxygen, the hydrogen, and the carbon separate and combine in the proportions necessary to produce alcohol, so that, in drinking grape juice, one does not really drink alcohol, since this does not yet exist. It is formed from the constituent parts of water and sugar, without there being, in sum, one molecule more or less.

In the bread and the vegetables that one eats, there is certainly no flesh, nor blood, nor bone, nor bile, nor cerebral matter; nevertheless, these same foods, decomposing and recomposing by the work of digestion, produce those different substances solely by the transmutation of their constitutive elements.

In the seed of a tree, likewise there is no wood, leaves, flowers, or fruits, and it would be a puerile error to believe that the entire tree, in microscopic form, is found there. There is scarcely even, in the seed, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon in the quantity necessary to form one leaf of the tree. It contains a germ that unfolds, the conditions being favorable. This germ develops by effect of the juices that it draws from the earth and of the gases that it breathes from the air. Such juices, which are neither wood, nor leaves, nor flowers, nor fruits, infiltrating into the plant, form its sap, as in animals they form the blood. Carried by circulation to all the parts of the vegetable, the sap, according to the organ it reaches and where it undergoes a special elaboration, is transformed into wood, leaves, and fruits, as the blood is transformed into flesh, bone, bile, etc. Yet they are always the same elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, diversely combined.

— The different combinations of the elements, for the formation of mineral, vegetable, and animal substances, cannot, then, operate except in the proper environments and circumstances; outside of those circumstances, the elementary principles are in a kind of inertia. But, as soon as the circumstances become favorable, a work of elaboration begins; the molecules enter into movement, are agitated, attract one another, drawing near and separating by virtue of the law of affinities and, by their multiple combinations, compose the infinite variety of substances. Let these conditions disappear and the work suddenly ceases, to begin again when they present themselves anew. It is thus that vegetation is activated, weakens, stops, and proceeds, under the action of heat, of light, of humidity, of cold or of drought; that this plant prospers in one climate or one terrain, and withers or perishes in others.

— What daily passes before our eyes can put us on the track of what passed at the origin of times, since the laws of Nature do not vary.

Seeing that the constitutive elements of organic and inorganic beings are the same; that we know them to be forming incessantly, in given circumstances, the stones, the plants, and the fruits, we can conclude from this that the bodies of the first living beings were formed, like the first stones, by the union of the elementary molecules, by virtue of the law of affinity, as the conditions of the vitality of the globe were propitious to this or that species.

The resemblance of form and of colors, in the reproduction of the individuals of each species, can be compared to the resemblance of form of each species of crystal. Juxtaposing themselves, under the action of the same law, the molecules produce an analogous whole.

VITAL PRINCIPLE.

— In saying that plants and animals are formed of the same constituent principles as minerals, we speak in an exclusively material sense, since here it is only of the body that we treat.

Without speaking of the intelligent principle, which is a separate question, there is, in organic matter, a special principle, imperceptible and which cannot yet be defined: the vital principle.

Active in the living being, this principle is found extinct in the dead being; but not on that account does it cease to give to the substance properties that distinguish it from inorganic substances.

Chemistry, which decomposes and recomposes the greater part of inorganic bodies, has also succeeded in decomposing organic bodies, but has never come to reconstitute even a dead leaf, evident proof that there is in these latter something whatever that does not exist in the others.

— Is the vital principle something particular, that has its own existence? Or, integrated into the system of the unity of the generative element, will it only be a special state, one of the modifications of the cosmic fluid, by which this becomes the principle of life, as it becomes light, fire, heat, electricity? It is in this latter sense that the communications reproduced above resolve the question. (Chap. VI:

General Uranography.)

But, whatever opinion one may have about the nature of the vital principle, the certain thing is that it exists, since its effects are appreciated.

One can, therefore, logically admit that, in forming, the organic beings assimilated the vital principle, as being necessary to their destination; or, if one prefers, that this principle developed in each individual, by effect of the very combination of the elements, just as there develop, given certain circumstances, heat, light, and electricity.

— Combining without the vital principle, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon would only have formed a mineral or inorganic body; 2 the vital principle, modifying the molecular constitution of this body, gives it special properties. In place of a mineral molecule, one has a molecule of organic matter.

The activity of the vital principle is nourished during life by the action of the functioning of the organs, in the same way that heat is by the rotational movement of a wheel. That action ceasing, by reason of death, the vital principle is extinguished, like heat, when the wheel ceases to turn.

But the effect produced by this principle upon the molecular state of the body subsists, even after it is extinguished, as the carbonization of wood subsists after the extinction of the heat. In the analysis of organic bodies, Chemistry finds the elements that constitute them: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; but it cannot reconstitute those bodies, because, the cause no longer existing, it is not possible for it to reproduce the effect, whereas it is possible for it to reconstitute a stone.

— We take for a term of comparison the heat that is developed by the movement of a wheel, as being a common effect, which everyone knows, and easier to understand. More exact, however, we would have been, in saying that, in the combination of the elements to form organic bodies, electricity is developed.

Organic bodies would then be true electric batteries, which function while the elements of those batteries are in conditions to produce electricity: that is life; which cease to function, when such conditions disappear: that is death.

According to this manner of seeing, the vital principle would be nothing more than a particular kind of electricity, denominated animal electricity, which during life is released by the action of the organs and whose production ceases, at death, by the extinction of such action. SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

— It is natural to ask why living beings no longer form under the same conditions in which the first ones that arose on Earth were formed.

On this point, light cannot fail to be cast by the question of spontaneous generation, which so preoccupies Science, although it is still diversely resolved.

The problem is this: Are there formed, in present times, organic beings by the mere union of the elements that constitute them, without germs previously produced by the ordinary mode of generation, or, in other words, without fathers nor mothers?

The partisans of spontaneous generation answer affirmatively, basing themselves on direct observations, which seem conclusive. Others think that all living beings reproduce one from another, supported by the fact, which experience confirms, that the germs of certain vegetable and animal species, even dispersed, conserve a latent vitality, for a long time, until the circumstances favor their hatching.

This manner of understanding always leaves open the question of the formation of the first types of each species.

— Without discussing the two systems, it is fitting to emphasize that the principle of spontaneous generation evidently can be applied only to the beings of the lowest orders of the vegetable kingdom and of the animal kingdom, to those in which life begins to dawn and whose organism, extremely simple, is, in a certain way, rudimentary. These were, indeed, the first that appeared on Earth and whose formation had to be spontaneous. We would thus be witnessing a permanent creation, analogous to that which was produced in the first ages of the world.

— But, then, why are the beings of complex organization not formed in the same manner? That these beings did not always exist is a positive fact; therefore, they had a beginning.

If the moss, the lichen, the zoophyte, the infusorian, the intestinal worms, and others can produce themselves spontaneously, why does the same not occur with the trees, the fish, the dogs, the horses?

There the investigations stop, for the present; the guiding thread disappears and, until it be found, the field remains open to hypotheses. It would be, then, imprudent and premature to present mere systems as absolute truths.

— If spontaneous generation is a demonstrated fact, however limited it may be, it does not cease to constitute a capital fact, a landmark of a nature to indicate the path toward new observations.

It is known that complex organic beings are not produced in that manner;

but who knows how they began? Who knows the secret of all the transformations? Seeing the oak come from the acorn, who can affirm that there does not exist a mysterious link between the polyp and the elephant? (No. 25.)

In the present state of our knowledge, we cannot establish the theory of permanent spontaneous generation, except as a hypothesis, but as a probable hypothesis and one that one day, perhaps, will take its place among the incontestable scientific truths. n SCALE OF ORGANIC BEINGS.

— Between the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom, there is no boundary clearly marked. At the confines of the two kingdoms are the zoophytes or animal-plants, whose name indicates that they participate in both: it serves them as a link of union.

Like animals, plants are born, live, grow, nourish themselves, breathe, reproduce, and die. Like the former, they need light, heat, and water; they wither and die as soon as these elements fail them. The absorption of a vitiated air and of deleterious substances poisons them. They offer as a more accentuated distinctive character that they remain fixed to the soil and draw their nutrition from it, without displacing themselves.

The zoophyte has the exterior appearance of the plant. Like a plant, it remains fixed to the soil; like an animal, life in it is more accentuated: it draws its nourishment from the surrounding environment.

A step above, the animal is free and seeks its food: in the first place come the innumerable varieties of polyps, of gelatinous bodies, without well-defined organs, differing from plants only by the faculty of locomotion; 5 there follow, in the order of the development of the organs, of vital activity, and of instinct, the helminths or intestinal worms; the mollusks, fleshy animals without bones, some of them naked, like the slugs, the octopuses, others provided with shells, like the snail, the oyster; the crustaceans, whose skin is covered with a hard crust, like the crab, the lobster; the insects, in which life takes on prodigious activity and the ingenious instinct manifests itself, like the ant, the bee, the spider. Some metamorphose, like the caterpillar, which is transformed into an elegant butterfly.

Then comes the order of the vertebrates, animals of bony skeleton, an order that encompasses the fishes, the reptiles, the birds; 7 there follow, finally, the mammals, whose organization is the most complete.

— Considering only the two extreme points of the chain, no apparent analogy will appear; but, if we pass from one side to the other without solution of continuity, one arrives, without abrupt transition, from the plant to the vertebrate animals.

One understands then the possibility that the animals of complex organization are nothing more than a transformation, or, if you will, a gradual development, at first imperceptible, of the immediately inferior species and, thus, successively, down to the primitive elementary being.

Between the acorn and the oak the difference is great; nevertheless, if we follow step by step the development of the acorn, we shall arrive at the oak and shall no longer be astonished that this proceeds from so small a seed.

Now, if the acorn encloses in latency the elements proper to the formation of a gigantic tree, why would the same not occur from the mollusk to the elephant? (No. 23)

In accordance with what has been said, one perceives that spontaneous generation does not exist except for the elementary organic beings; the superior species would be the product of the successive transformations of those same beings, realized as the atmospheric conditions became propitious to them.

Each species acquiring the faculty of reproducing itself, the crossings brought about innumerable varieties. Then, once installed in favorable conditions, who tells us that the primitive germs whence it arose did not disappear forever, as useless? Who tells us that our present mollusk is identical to the one that, from transformation to transformation, produced the elephant? It would thus be explained why there is no spontaneous generation among the animals of complex organization.

This theory, without being yet admitted, in a definitive manner, is the one that evidently tends to predominate today in Science. Serious observers accept it as more rational.

CORPOREAL MAN.

— From the corporeal and purely anatomical point of view, man belongs to the class of mammals, from which he differs only by some nuances in the exterior form. As for the rest, the same composition as all animals, the same organs, the same functions, and the same modes of nutrition, of respiration, of secretion, of reproduction. He is born, lives, and dies under the same conditions and, when he dies, his body decomposes, like everything that lives. There is not, in his blood, in his flesh, in his bones, one atom different from those that are found in the body of animals. Like these, on dying, he restores to the earth the oxygen, the hydrogen, the nitrogen, and the carbon that had combined to form him; and these elements, by means of new combinations, go on to form other mineral, vegetable, and animal bodies. So great is the analogy that his organic functions are studied in certain animals, when the experiments cannot be made on himself.

— In the class of mammals, man belongs to the order of the bimana. Immediately below him come the quadrumana (animals of four hands) or apes, some of which, like the orangutan, the chimpanzee, the gibbon, have certain gestures of man to such a point that, for a long time, they were denominated: men of the forests. Like man, these apes walk erect, use staffs, build huts, and carry their food to the mouth with the hand: characteristic signs.

— However little one observes the scale of living beings, from the point of view of the organism, one is forced to recognize that, from the lichen to the tree and from the zoophyte to man, there is a chain that rises gradually, without solution of continuity and whose rings all have a point of contact with the preceding ring;

following step by step the series of beings, one would say that each species is a perfecting, a transformation of the immediately inferior species.

Seeing that the conditions of the body of man are identical to those of the other bodies, chemically and constitutionally; seeing that he is born, lives, and dies in the same manner, also under the same conditions as the others he must have been formed.

— Although this wounds his pride, man must resign himself to seeing in his material body nothing more than the last ring of animality on Earth.

There stands the inexorable argument of facts, against which it would be useless to protest.

Nevertheless, the more the body diminishes in value in his eyes, the more the spiritual principle grows in importance; if the former levels him with the brute, the latter raises him to immeasurable height.

We see the extreme limit of the animal: we do not see the limit to which the spirit of man will arrive.

— Materialism can see from this that Spiritism, far from fearing the discoveries of Science and its positivism, goes to meet them and provokes them, since it possesses the certainty that the spiritual principle, which has its own existence, can in no way suffer from them.

Spiritism marches alongside materialism, in the field of matter; it admits all that the latter admits; but it advances beyond the point where this latter stops.

Spiritism and materialism are like two travelers who walk together, setting out from the same point; arrived at a certain distance, one says: “I cannot go further”; the other proceeds and discovers a new world.

Why, then, must the first say that the second is mad, only because, glimpsing new horizons, he decides to cross the limits where it suits the other to halt?

Was not Christopher Columbus also branded as mad, because he believed in the existence of a world, beyond the ocean? How many of those sublime madmen does History not count, who have made Humanity advance and to whom crowns are woven, after mud has been hurled at them?

Well then! Spiritism, the madness of the nineteenth century, according to those who obstinately remain on the terrestrial shore, lays bare to us a whole world, a world far more important for man than America, since not all men go to America, whereas all, without exception of any, go to that of the Spirits, making incessant crossings from one to the other.

The point at which we find ourselves with relation to Genesis being scaled, materialism halts, while Spiritism proceeds in its researches in the domain of spiritual Genesis.

[1] The table below, of the analysis of some substances, shows the difference of properties that results from the mere difference in the proportion in which the constituent elements enter. Out of 100 parts, we have:

Carbon Hydrogen Oxygen Nitrogen Cane sugar.

42.470 6.900 50.630 ”

Grape sugar.

36.710 6.780 56.510 ”

Alcohol.

51.980 13.700 34.320 ”

Olive oil.

77.210 13.360 9.430 ”

Walnut oil.

79.774 10.570 9.122 0.534 Fat.

78.996 11.700 9.304 ”

Fibrin.

53.360 7.021 19.685 19.934 [2] Spiritist Review, July 1868: Spontaneous generation and genesis.