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_DEATH AND RESURRECTION._




[Illustration: GUSTAF JOHAN BJÖRKLUND]




                         Death and Resurrection
                         FROM THE POINT OF VIEW
                           OF THE CELL-THEORY

                                   BY
                            GUSTAF BJÖRKLUND

                     Translated from the Swedish by
                               J. E. FRIES

                                 Chicago
                    THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY

                              LONDON AGENTS
                 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
                                  1910

                              Copyright by
                      THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
                                  1910




PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.


Never in the history of human thought has the interest in the soul
and its immortality been greater and keener than now. The leading
investigators of the Society of Psychical Research have taken up the
problem of enquiring into the facts of spiritual experiences, telepathy,
forebodings and kindred phenomena. The result has been rather negative,
for, while we have received innumerable single facts, they all suffer
from the common fault that they are too subjective in their nature to
furnish a proof that could be objectively valid. Moreover, many reports
come from witnesses whose mental constitution is under the suspicion of
being pathological, and so their value is practically null.

Of much greater importance would be an investigation as to the
possibility of immortality on the basis of scientific data, but, strange
to say, this method has been almost entirely lost sight of by leaders of
the S. P. R. If we could form a definite theory as to the nature of the
soul based on exact observation, we would be enabled, first, to explain
man’s instinctive yearning for immortality; and, secondly, to form a
definite idea of the condition of the soul after death. Thus we could
exclude all the many mistakes which are now made, and which originate
through an erroneous and partly superstitious notion of the relation of
the dead to the living. The result is shown in the reports of the S. P.
R., abounding in statements of ghost stories, which can be regarded only
as a continuation of folk-lore. As a matter of fact, the work of the S.
P. R. has so far provided very little help toward a better comprehension
of immortality.

Among the men who have done the work of a sympathetic reconstruction
of the idea of immortality on the basis of science, there is to be
mentioned, next to Fechner, Gustave Björklund, a Swedish scientist who is
well known in his own country, but who has been almost entirely ignored
in other lands. The obvious reason of this is the inaccessibility of his
writings, which have not yet been translated into English.

We do not believe Björklund’s solution is the right one, but we do
believe that he has made a contribution to the philosophy of religion
which ought not to be ignored. His case is similar to Fechner’s. We have
published Fechner’s book _On Life After Death_ and we are glad to present
the views of Björklund on _Death and Resurrection_.

Dr. Carus has sketched his views repeatedly in _The Soul of Man_, in
_Whence and Whither_, and two articles published in _The Monist_, with
special reference to Fechner. They show also why Björklund’s belief is
unacceptable.

Nevertheless we publish Björklund’s book because we heartily sympathize
with his endeavor to justify those sentiments which instinctively point
out that death is not a finality, and that the purpose of life is not
limited to the span of our days between the cradle and the grave, but
that it has a further and fuller significance.

We hope that Björklund’s book will be welcomed as the contribution of an
earnest and prominent scientific thinker on the important question, “If a
man die, shall he live again?”

                                                          THE PUBLISHERS.




TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.


Johan Gustaf Björklund was born the tenth of November, in the year 1846.
His parents were farmers in very small circumstances. His father seems
to have been endowed with a good business head and, ultimately, became
a real estate owner on a small scale, first in one city and then in
Upsala, the principal university town of Sweden. Poverty was familiar to
Björklund throughout his life. Doubtless one reason for this was that
his consuming interest in sociology and philosophy prevented him from
taking those higher examinations, which in Sweden are indispensable for
obtaining any official position. He studied, however, for several years
at the University of Upsala, but followed no recognized course, and it
was only because of the ardent persuasion of his friends that he took a
degree as B. A.

In 1884, Björklund moved to Stockholm, where he remained until his death,
in 1903. At the University of Stockholm, he took the courses in biology
and natural science, and won for himself the admiration and lasting
friendship of many of the professors of that institution. During this
time he mainly supported himself by teaching philosophy, and among other
pupils, afterward renowned, was Ellen Key, the well-known Swedish writer
on sociology and the woman question. The most absorbing interests during
this period were, however, sociology and the peace movement.

To broaden his views and study social conditions in general, Björklund
undertook several protracted journeys to England, Germany, Belgium, and
France.

From 1887, Björklund began to publish the fruits of his untiring labor.
His first work was, “The Fusion of the Nations.” In that, as in “The
Anarchy of Evolution” and “Peace and Disarmament,” Björklund throws his
overwhelmingly convincing statistical resources and solid scientific
learning in favor of an ultimate universal, but more especially European
union of the nations. Toward this goal it is necessary to steer,
according to Björklund, if a general “Anarchy of Evolution” is to be
avoided; for that is the condition that will prevail, if the state
neglects to carry out an organization of society that shall keep step
with the degree of material culture reached. “Because during the most
profound peace, a nation suffers from its own army the same impeding
influences that in time of war is due to the hostile army.”

The last mentioned book, “Peace and Disarmament,” at once made Björklund
famous. It was translated into French, German, English, Polish, Dutch,
Hungarian and several other languages, and would no doubt have brought
its author a Nobel prize, had it appeared fifteen years later. Björklund
was now elected an honorary member of the Swedish Peace Society. At
the Peace Congress in Bern (1892) his treatise, “The Armed Peace,” was
distributed in English, German and French, and the Italian Society,
“Unione Operaia Umberto I,” subsequently elected him an honorary member.

In his later years Björklund devoted less time to active work in the
universal peace movement. He became more absorbed in scientific research
and the problems of philosophy. An important impulse to his later
development, he received from a book, “Significance of Segmentation in
the Organic World” (Stockholm, 1890). Here he was brought to serious
consideration of the nature of the cell and of its place in life. In the
organization of the cells in a human body Björklund saw an example of a
universal law, governing all life. With this thought as a starting point,
he undertook to investigate the problem, all-important to his philosophy,
of the awakening of self-consciousness in a cell-organization and the
relationship between this newborn ego and the cells themselves, each of
which, to a certain degree, leads an independent life.

The result of his studies was first made known in 1894 in a treatise,
“The Relation Between Soul and Body from a Cytologic Point of View.” In
the year 1900, he published the volume herewith presented to the American
public, in which he has partly rewritten the former book, and further
added his latest conceptions of the nature and evolution of life.

This work is undoubtedly one of Sweden’s most remarkable and interesting
contributions to contemporary philosophy. It is also the last work from
Gustaf Björklund’s hand. In July, 1903, his earthly existence was
brought to an end, and he was “fully translated” to that spiritual world,
the existence of which he was so thoroughly convinced.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is true that the philosophical structure that Björklund so
successfully commenced to upbuild is far from complete. But the basis
he laid is solid and will serve as a foundation for many temples of the
future, whether they who worship therein believe in Björklund’s God or
not.

This foundation is the fact overwhelmingly proved by Björklund, that life
is not a quality in matter or physical force, but must be of immaterial
origin and substance. Granting that time as well as space are forms in
which matter and physical force are comprehended by man on his earthly
stage of consciousness, Björklund has also demonstrated the immortality
of life. For if life be a reality, which is not here denied, with no
roots in matter or physical force, whether these are identical or not,
this reality exists outside of the forms, time and space, in which matter
appears. But whether matter and physical force exist per se, or are
mere transient phenomena or what their origin and purpose is, these are
questions that Björklund never was granted the time to discuss.

Björklund’s grand conception of the relationship between all living
beings and their organic upbuilding of larger conscious units, where
each individual of higher order is the sum total of all its constituent
members of lower order, is certainly a most helpful and inspiring
addition to our theory of evolution.

But the question why an evolution is necessary at all for beings that
are constituent members in The Perfect Being, is hardly satisfactorily
answered by Björklund. His ingenious explanation, fully presented toward
the end of this volume, still leaves us in a dilemma. Björklund holds
that Perfect Love has left it to time-existent beings to become of
Free Will what they of eternity have been to the All-Spirit; much as a
child, unless considered merely a mechanical toy, must of free will, grow
into the man that his father preconceived and all the time sees in it.
But even so we are left between Scylla and Charybdis, for either this
evolution has a purpose, which must be reached outside of time—that is,
it will come to a standstill; an ending in Nirvana—or else evolution
is everlasting, without final purpose, and its proper name—delusion.
Again the time-bound mind meets in this, as well as in every ethical
or metaphysical problem, if it be pushed to its ultimate consequences,
the same conflict or irrationality that is destined to baffle the
space-bound man, whether his microscope is restlessly at work to solve
the riddle of the divisibility of matter, or his telescope sweeps the
heavens in a vain search for the utmost star. This irrationality, that
everywhere surrounds us, is a chasm that only religion can bridge.
From a philosophical point of view, therefore, we must be satisfied if
our workable hypotheses in philosophy and in natural science do not
contradict each other; and Gustaf Björklund has shown us a road to
reconciliation between idealism and natural science, that for a long time
seemed entirely lost in the jungle of the materialism of the last century.

                                                             J. E. FRIES.

    For the biographical data of Björklund’s life I am indebted
    to S. A. Fries, D. D., well known in continental theological
    circles as a scientist of rank and founder of the international
    Congresses in the interest of the History of Religion. (See
    Theologische Literatur Kalender 1906; Wer ist’s? 1908.) Dr.
    Fries, who is one of the leading ministers in Stockholm, has
    done more in speech and print than anybody else to introduce
    Björklund to the reading public.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


                                                                      PAGE.

    OLD CONCEPTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE                                     1

    MAN’S SPIRITUAL BODY                                                26

    SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE                                       37

    IMPORTANCE OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION                                51

    MATERIALISTIC DEMONSTRATION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION               67

    HOW IS ORGANIC MATTER PRODUCED?                                     87

    ORGANIC MATTER AS A PRODUCT OF ART                                 107

    THE SOUL AND THE CELLS                                             124

    FUNDAMENTAL QUALITIES OF AN ORGANISM                               138

    ORGANIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOUL AND THE CELLS                147

    RESURRECTION                                                       166

    MAN AND INFINITY                                                   174

    RECAPITULATION                                                     188




_DEATH AND RESURRECTION._




    All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
    Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
    ...
    All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
    All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
    ...
    And spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
    One truth is clear, Whatever is is Right.

                                    —Alex. Pope.
                            Essay on Man, Epistle I.




CHAPTER I.

Old Conceptions of a Future Life.


A consciousness of immortality, sometimes dim and vague, sometimes vivid
and clear, seems to be characteristic of the human race. However low man
may stand he cannot consider death to be the end of his existence. The
conviction that he is immortal is innate to him. Annihilation is contrary
to the nature and demands of his spirit. It is true that uncertainty and
doubt might arise, but man will never be able wholly to uproot either
hope or fear as to the possibility of a future life.

Experiencing such feelings and presentiments, man finds himself amidst
a world where death and dissolution everywhere surround him. He sees
the objects of his love or fear pass away, and he knows that sooner or
later the same fate will befall himself. When he beholds the lifeless
body of some near relative, his presentiment of immortality tells him
that the selfsame soul that once animated that body is still alive. In
such moments even the man of low cultivation is forced into more or less
profound contemplation. The following reflection impresses itself with
might and wonder upon him: “I feel convinced that the dead is living, but
how can he live without his body and what form does his new life take?”

In all ages and stages, men have asked the same or similar questions, and
they will go on asking them as long as belief in a future life obtains.

But man does not confine himself to questioning, he wants answers, and
especially must this be true where the reply is so intimately connected
with himself. And these answers have not been lacking; we find them
formulated in those opinions and theories respecting a future life which
throughout the ages have gradually appeared and prevailed.

The critically thinking public of the present day takes a decidedly
skeptical attitude toward all these theories. They assert, and not
without strong arguments, that it is impossible to know anything. But,
however convinced the public may be of the fruitlessness of discussing
the topic, no one will succeed in pushing it entirely aside. Time and
again the same questions reappear as dark and threatening clouds on the
horizon of our consciousness; they occupy our thoughts, take hold upon
our feelings and color our sentiments. It would undoubtedly be sufficient
at such moments to have, were it only one fixed point to stand upon; one
established fact to start from and which we could trust would lead our
thoughts in the right direction. But such a basis to set out from we
have not hitherto been able to find. Will this remain the case forever?
Will science concerning a future life always fail to attain aught but
negative results? Let us say at once that humanity will probably be able
to ascertain as much as it may be necessary or useful for us to know in
this world. This hope is founded on our firm belief that at this time a
basis such as that above mentioned really exists. Natural science has
furnished this basis, though nobody as yet has happened to reflect that
the facts upon which this basis rests may have any bearing upon our
attitude toward a future life, much less give answer to questions such as
the following: How, and in what way, is man to pass from this life into
another?

It will be the object of the following pages, then, to develop further
the view just intimated.

In prehistoric times men believed in a close relationship between
the soul of the deceased and his body in the grave, and this purely
instinctive faith is the more remarkable, as it prevailed during stages
of civilization when differentiation between spiritual qualities and
physical matter was almost unknown.

The contradistinction between soul and body is certainly a fact, a
general experience. But neither the individual nor the race realizes
this fact suddenly or all at once. The knowledge of the distinction
between the physical and the spiritual sphere, with their different
characteristics and qualities, proceeds step by step, being the result of
slowly advancing evolution.

The child and the savage remain unconscious of any discrimination between
soul and body, and even for the more cultivated man, the border between
the two is vague and undetermined. According to the psychologic order of
man’s evolution we might therefore expect that the problem as to this
relationship would appear at a comparatively late date, and even then be
of importance only to a reduced number of more cultivated individuals.
But, on the contrary, experience shows that this question occupies the
thoughts of men in very low stages of civilization, and, in fact, that
it is of the most general interest.

The reason for this evidently lies in the instinctive belief that
the body contains something which is immortal, and which in the life
hereafter the soul cannot dispense with.

In its first historic form the question concerning the soul’s relation
to the body deals with this relation after, not before, the separation
of the soul and body. This latter problem emerges only in very high
stages of civilization, and even then is of scientific interest to an
insignificant minority only, while the question of our existence after
death is religious in its nature and of interest to all.

In olden times men were more fully convinced of a continued personal
existence after death than civilized mankind seems to be nowadays. The
same vivid conviction we find even in our age among people in the natural
state. From the prehistoric peoples we have no written communication,
but from their graves they speak to the present day intelligibly and
plainly of their belief in a life to come. Behold the monuments defying
time and decay, which these people have erected in memory of their
deceased. The sepulchres of the Egyptian kings to this very day arouse
our amazement and admiration.

What was it, then, that induced these peoples of early times to bestow
such extraordinary labor on the places of their last rest? It certainly
was their belief that the graves contained not only the lifeless body,
but also the living soul. The funeral ceremonies evidently show, as
Fustel de Coulanges says, that when the body was laid in the grave it was
thought that something yet alive was placed there at the same time. The
soul was born simultaneously with the body; death did not separate them;
they were both enclosed together in the grave. In olden times people felt
so fully assured that a man lived in the tomb, that they never failed
to bury with him the things of which he was thought to be in want. They
poured wine on the grave in order to quench his thirst; they brought
food to his tomb in order to appease his hunger; they killed horses and
slaves, believing that, if enclosed with the dead, these would serve him
in his grave as they had served him during his life.

It was also in this conviction that the positive duty of burying
the deceased originated. In order to bring rest to the soul in the
subterranean dwelling that fitted its new existence, it was necessary
that the body, to which, in some way or another, it still clung, should
be covered with earth. The soul, denied a grave, had no dwelling.
Drifting about, it sought in vain the desired rest after life’s fitful
struggle. Without shelter, without offerings or food, it was condemned
to everlasting wandering. Therefore, because the deceased was unhappy,
he became ill-natured. He tormented the living; sent them diseases;
destroyed their harvests; haunted them in uncanny visions in order to
remind them of their duty to bury the body and thereby secure peace for
himself.

The old authors give evidence of the degree to which people were vexed
by fear that proper ceremonies would not be observed at their burial.
It was a constant source of grievous irritation. The fear of death was
less prevalent than the fear of being left unburied. Naturally so, for it
was a question of eternal happiness. It should therefore not surprise us
so much when we see the Athenians execute generals, who, after a naval
victory, had neglected to bury the fallen. These generals, disciples of
the philosophers of their time, did not believe that the fate of the soul
was dependent on that of the body. They had therefore decided not to
challenge the tempest for the empty formality of gathering and burying
the fallen. But the masses, even in enlightened Athens, still clung to
the old conceptions, and accused the generals of godlessness, sentencing
them to death. By their victory they had saved Athens, but by their
negligence they had brought perdition upon thousands of souls. “These
conceptions,” says Fustel de Coulanges, “have governed man and society
through many generations, and have been the source from which the larger
part of ancient domestic and public institutions were derived.”

But this is not all. The primitive ideas, referred to above, obtain
even today among various nations and tribes all over the earth. From
the islands in the Pacific Ocean all the way up to the Polar regions we
meet with the same creeds among uncivilized peoples, the same or similar
manner of burial as among the ancients.

If we were going to illustrate this, the Chinese probably would be the
first to attract our attention, not only because of the antiquity of
their civilization, but because of their great numbers. As is well
known, a third part of the world’s population is Chinese. Most of
the characteristic peculiarities of this enormous community must be
attributed to their death-cultus.

Every family in China lives in continuous communication with its
ancestors, upon whom are bestowed offerings of fruit, grain, rice or
vegetables, according to the products of the soil of their home. The soul
will lose none of its qualities through the separation from the body.
In company with other souls of their kindred it hovers over the family,
partakes of their sufferings, rejoices in their happiness. If forgotten,
it grows melancholy and ill-natured, it complains in doleful voice and
its moans are ominous. Woe unto him who ignores these obligations. The
offerings to the souls of his forefathers must not be neglected. Their
memory must not be allowed to fade away. But who is going to attend
to these sacrifices and memorial observances if the family dies out?
Matrimony, therefore, becomes a sacred duty, the foremost of all duties.

To the Chinese mind there is no grievance greater, no punishment more
terrible, than expulsion from the family. What would become of a man’s
soul if his nearest of kin would curse his memory? To rid himself of such
a sickening dream he is ready to sacrifice everything, even life itself.
But only when the body is brought to rest in the family grave can the
soul enjoy the care of its kindred. It is obvious, then, that emigration
is looked upon with great apprehension by the faithful Chinaman. He
must either return home during his life or else arrange that his body
be brought back if death should overtake him while abroad. We know that
the big transoceanic steamship companies faithfully carry out this part
of their contracts with those of their Chinese passengers who meet with
unexpected death in America.

Similar ideas are to be found among the negroes of Africa and Australia,
and among the Indian tribes of America. These also supply their deceased
with such tools and provisions as they are supposed to need in another
world.

Among the Arctic peoples the same customs and usages prevail. When an
Eskimo is about to die, he is dressed in his best clothes and his knees
are drawn up under him. The grave is lined inside with moss and a skin,
over which stones and peat are spread. If the dead is a man, his boat,
weapons and tools are laid beside the grave; if a woman, her knife and
sewing utensils; if it is a child, the head of a dog is placed on top of
the grave, that the soul of the dog may show the helpless child a road to
the second life. If a mother dies while nursing a babe, it is, as a rule,
buried alive with her.

In a Samoyede grave, Nordenskold found among other things parts of an
iron pot, an ax, a knife, a drill, a bow, a wooden arrow, some copper
ornaments, etc. Even rolls of birch bark were found in the coffin, in
all probability to be used for making fire in another world. Beside the
grave a sleigh was placed upside down, evidently in order to provide
a vehicle for the deceased, and we may assume that reindeers were
slaughtered at the funeral.

The essential, fundamental thought in this conception which causes the
uncultivated peoples in our days to treat their deceased in the same
way as the ancients did, is the belief that the body contains something
which the soul cannot do without in the future life. Soul and body are
and remain a unit even beyond the grave. As death means a violent tearing
apart of these two factors, the soul cannot be wholly satisfied without
its natural relationship to the body.

It is evident, therefore, that to the ancient world life in the lower
regions seemed dismal and repulsive. Achilles would rather be a
day-laborer on earth than king of the hosts in Hades. Life there passed
in a shadowy inactivity amidst all wealth, a desolate emptiness in all
superfluity, so that the soul could not help but suffer a ceaseless
regret whether it moved in the halls of Valhalla or in the Elysian
fields. Glorious meadows, crystal waters, streams of milk and honey,
could not obliterate the craving of the soul for its corporeal existence.
It returns time and again to the body in the grave to enjoy the
sacrifices and cares of the surviving.

This mourning for the body and continuous longing for the sunny life
on earth made death seem something terrible that fretted and tormented
men. Was it not natural, then, that the mental disharmony caused by
the thought of death, should sooner or later bring about a reaction;
give birth to the hope of a reunion of the soul with the body on a
resurrection day of the dead? At some such conclusion several religions
have arrived. We need mention only the Norse sagas, Islam, Parseeism and
Judaism. A resurrection, everywhere taught in almost identical terms, is
placed at the end of the present system of the world in connection with
a cosmic catastrophe out of which new heavens and a new earth with an
ennobled humanity will emerge.

The bodily resurrection on the day of judgment is a doctrine also in the
Christian faith, as it is interpreted by the orthodox creeds. But this
dogma has entirely lost its former authority. It is repeated at each
Church burial, but the reading has now become a mere formality. We do not
believe any more in a resurrection in the old sense.

What factor in our time has been sufficiently powerful to overturn
conceptions so deeply rooted in human nature? It is the scientific spirit
as acknowledged even by faithful theologians. Science has shown that
man’s body is renewed several times during life and that even the bones,
placed in the grave, soon “arise” through nature’s forces themselves and
take part again in the universal circulation of matter. In face of all
the evidence for this truth, it is impossible to believe in the old
doctrine of a physical resurrection.

Another question is, whether this ancient belief could disappear without
leaving traces in contemporary consciousness. Can man have changed so
radically in a century, or rather in a few decades, that the conviction
of the body’s importance to the soul after death will no longer find
an echo in his religious instincts? By no means. We are the same human
beings and have the same human nature as our forefathers. Forms of
conception may go, but not the instincts to which they once gave a
satisfactory expression.

We may therefore rest assured that the important change of attitude
in this question forcefully reacts on religious life in our day. The
reaction does not necessarily mean progress at first. Evolution does not
follow a straight line; a step forward is generally immediately followed
by phenomena in the opposite direction.

The religious instincts, underlying the conception of the body’s
importance to the soul in a future life, must create new expressions, and
the logic of the old conceptions themselves indicates what forms they
would take.

When the belief in a restoration of the union between the two factors
in a human being was suddenly and almost violently shaken by natural
science, there seemed at first no other way out of the difficulty than
to choose between them and declare either the soul or the body as the
essential part.

Those who felt inclined toward the former alternative evidently found
themselves confined to a one-sided idealism of little vitality, because
an existence without body seems as shadowy and unsatisfactory to man in
the present as in ancient times. An increasing weakening of the intensity
of religious life would be the natural consequence.

Those again who, because of a more realistic tendency, insisted upon the
essentiality of our body, were logically driven to a gross materialism.
If science had proved that the belief in a bodily resurrection is
untenable, why should it not be able to demonstrate that all religious
doctrines were delusions? This reasoning seemed to many so natural that
many scientific facts contributed evidence in their favor even when these
facts pointed entirely in the opposite direction.

There was, however, no necessity to think and reason as these two main
schools in our age have done. One might also from the beginning, have
taken the same road and arrived at the same conclusion as, for instance,
Granfelt in his “Christian Dogmatic.” “It has been demonstrated beyond
doubt by natural science,” says this prominent theologian, “that the
matter of a human body is, even here on earth, in continuous circulation,
so that in the course of a few weeks all atoms of the whole body are
replaced by new atoms. The only lasting attribute of the soul during this
process is the spiritual body, which assimilates, typically forms, and
again secretes the earthly matter. It must be this spiritual body, then,
that constitutes the combining element between man’s earthly body and his
glorified body in the eternal life.”

Christianity speaks not only of a material resurrection on the day of
judgment; it also says that man possesses within him a spiritual body,
which after death immediately arises to everlasting life. This latter
conception is not confined to Christianity. In all religions we find two
tendencies side by side, the one idealistic and the other more realistic,
which indeed are not really opposed to each other, inasmuch as the belief
in a spiritual body may be said to constitute the basis even for the
realistic conception that places the spirit in co-relation with the body
in the grave.

The idealistic tendency may be traced away back even to prehistoric times
and has generally been connected with some other burial methods, among
which cremation was the most common. The place cremation occupied in
ancient thought and the connection fancied by our forefathers between the
elements which make up man’s spiritual body, may be gathered from Victor
Rydberg’s researches in Germanic mythology.

“The popular ecclesiastical dualism of soul and body,” says Rydberg, “was
as foreign to the Veda-Aryans as to the heathen Germanic race. According
to the latter, man consisted of six different elements: First, the
earthly element of which the visible body is made; second, a vegetative;
third, an animal; fourth, the so-called _liten_ (_litr_), an inner body
shaped after the gods, and invisible to earthly eyes; fifth, the soul;
sixth, the spirit.”

The earthly and the vegetative elements were already joined in the trees,
Ask and Embla, when the gods came and changed them into the first human
pair. Each of the three gods gave them separate gifts. From Lodur they
received _la_, that is the blood, and _laeti_, that is the power of
intentional movement inherent in the blood, which attributes have been
considered by all peoples as the characteristics that distinguish animal
from vegetable life. Lodur gave them further the god-image, _liter
goda_, by the power of which man’s earthly substance receives the form
in which it appears to the senses. The Germanic race, like the Hellenes
and the Romans, believed that the gods had human form, so that this form
originally belonged to the gods. To the Germanic hierologists and bards
man was formed _in effigiem deorum_ and possessed in his nature a _liter
goda_, a god image in the literal sense of the word.

This image may for a short time be separated from the other human
elements, so that a person may assume the appearance of another without
changing his spiritual identity.

The soul, _odr_, is the gift of Höner, while the spirit, _önd_, is the
contribution of Odin.

Earthly death consists in the separation of the higher elements, spirit,
soul and _liten_, which form a unity for themselves, from the lower
elements and a removal of the former to Hades. The lower elements, the
earthly, the vegetal and the animal, continue in the grave for a longer
or shorter time to co-operate and form a certain unity, which, from the
higher elements, retain something of the living man’s personality and
qualities. This lower unity is the ghost, the wraith, which usually
sleeps during the day in the grave, but in the night might wake either
spontaneously or by other people’s prayers and sorcery. The ghost
possesses the nature of the deceased; it is good and benevolent, or evil
and dangerous, according to his disposition. Because animal and vegetal
elements form part of his nature, he is tormented by a craving for
nourishment if he wakes from his slumber.

These conceptions of a dualistic life after death, common among the
Veda-Aryans, as well as among the heathen Norsemen, were closely allied
with the idea of cremation. _Agni_, the god of fire, removed the dead man
to a better world, while the coarser body, with its faults and defects,
was consumed by the flames.

It was a matter of doubt, however, whether _liten_, the inner body, would
suffer injury in the pyre. But this doubt was removed partly by certain
formulas, believed to be protective; partly by burning a buck together
with the body as compensation to the “flesh-eating fire,” the elementary
Agni (the hymns distinguish between the two), so that he should not
touch the subtler body of the corpse. Through the combustion, the lower
elements were enabled to immediately follow the soul of the deceased,
and it was thought that two advantages were gained thereby: First, the
second ego of the dead was liberated from its grave-dwelling, which was
monstrous if his sleep were disturbed either by craving for nourishment
or through the acts of Nirrtis and sorcerers; second, the surviving were
relieved from their dread of evil ghosts.




CHAPTER II.

Man’s Spiritual Body.


If we survey the stages of evolution through which humanity hitherto
has passed, we find that all peoples, from prehistoric times up to our
own days, have believed in a spiritual body which is essential to the
soul in a future life. Is humanity then mistaken in this universal
manifestation of religious intuition? On this question we need no longer
remain uncertain, no longer believe; _we know_ that man possesses such
a spiritual body. For many years, even centuries, this has been a fully
demonstrated fact, which may be directly observed, and which also has
been the subject of scientific research.

But what do we mean by spiritual body? The term conveys something of
a dim and vague, and at the same time unmistakable suggestion which
characterizes all we comprehend by our emotional faculties. Spiritual
body means what the words say, a spirituality derived from, or belonging
to, the body. But as no spirituality exists which is not individualized
or is not a quality of a living being, this spiritual body must be
identical with either one single unit or with a multitude of living
units. One single unit it cannot be, because this unity would then be
identical with the soul, while on the contrary, the spiritual body
should be independent, existing _per se_. It remains then a multitude of
spiritual units, which is precisely what natural science has proved to be
the case, _and these units in man’s spiritual body are identical with the
living cells_.

Before the discovery of the cell, our knowledge of the human body was
confined to such phenomena as could be observed with the naked eye. The
organism from that standpoint was necessarily a unit of members and
organs whose functions, and even coarser anatomic structure, were beyond
any accurate investigation. The elementary parts of the organic tissues
cannot, of course, be observed in this stage. They appear first under the
microscope and it is therefore with the discovery of this epoch-making
instrument that the science of organisms enters into a new era.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Malpighi and Grew found
that organic tissues, placed under the microscope, did not consist of
homogeneous substance as they appear to the naked eye, but of small
particles separated from each other, which particles have been called
cells. But although the cells were discovered, their real importance was
far from being understood, or even surmised. This was no doubt the reason
for the small interest given to the cell during the eighteenth century,
and the small progress cytology made during this whole period.

From 1670 to 1830, or more than a century and a half, the cell was
known mainly as a saccate body, resembling a hollow tube, and became
the subject of more or less wild speculations. A wider interest for
the substance and nature of the cell was evoked in the beginning of
the nineteenth century by the works of Brisseau de Mirbel, Treviranus,
Moldenhaver and several others. Many different parts began to be
distinguished within the cells, such as membrane, protoplasm,
chlorophyll, etc. These parts were later found to be as many organs in
the cell performing different functions, which are at present to some
extent defined. The cell previously considered as a saccate body proved
to constitute a being endowed with organs, a living organism.

According to modern cytology, the cell is a living individual; an
elementary organism. Although these beings are so exceedingly minute that
the naked eye can observe them only in combinations of thousands and
millions, yet each and every one of them not only possesses individual
life, but also the organs necessary for sustaining individual existence.
Innumerable quantities of such tiny beings build up the organisms of
plants and animals. As human individuals form the building material of
the body of a community, so the cells form the building material of the
bodies of plants and animals. Since the cells bear the same relation to
plants and animals as human individuals to a community, every plant and
animal then may be considered as a community, a cell-state, where the
cells are the citizens.

_Every organism, therefore, is a community, and vice versa, every
community is an organism._ So far as we have knowledge of the organisms
they are all similar in this respect. Plants and animals are communities
of individually living cells in the same sense as nations and states
are communities of human beings. The individuals in these different
communities are of different kinds and degrees of development, but the
composition of the organic edifice is in all essential features exactly
the same. The differences are literally only apparent, being due as they
are to the different aspect they present to our observation.

While we at first apprehend animals and plants as units, not seeing
the individual cells by which they are composed, we, in the national
organisms, on the contrary, first perceive the cells themselves—the human
individuals—but are unable to grasp the nations as individually living
organisms. On the one hand we see directly only the social side, on the
other, only the organic.

If there are beings observing the human community as we see plants and
animals, they would comprehend society as a unit composed of different
trades and industries, but not as composed of men, who are the building
material in these members. If such postulated observers made an invention
corresponding to our microscope, they would be surprised to find the
social organism composed of human individuals, which fact would seem just
as mystical to them as the cells seemed at first to us. So far as we have
derived from experience a knowledge of organic structure, it reveals
itself to us as _an individual composed of more primitive and elementary
individuals_. These elementary units of lower kind and order might
consequently be called a spiritual body in a literal sense.

From the point of view of the elementary constituent, each organism is
a community, a unit of similar, independently living, individuals; from
the point of view of the organs and of the whole, this community itself
is a living individual of higher potency and may in its turn enter as an
elementary organism in a spiritual body of still higher power, and so
on, in a geometric series. Man enters into the social organism, but is
himself composed of cell-organisms, which in turn consist of more primary
units.

Organic structure shows everywhere the same general qualities, the same
fundamental features. Each higher and more complex organism repeats in
a more perfect way and in a higher potency exactly the same general
forms of organization as its elementary constituents have shown in
their own sphere. Hence the surprising similarity in the structure of
the organisms. When we know one we know all. This would, of course,
be neither possible nor conceivable if the spiritual bodies, which
form their corporal structure, did not possess corresponding similar
fundamental qualities.

In what relationship do these cells stand to man? Do they enter into his
being as essential or only as incidental constituents? In other words,
does man act as organ for the cells and the cells as organs for man only
here in time; or, such existence being for the present postulated, is
their union extended even to a future existence? This question is of
extraordinary importance because it may entirely change our conception
of death. With this question settled, we should be in possession of a
fact from which we could draw reliable conclusions, and this fact is
briefly as follows: Within each living being a continuous renovation
takes place, a successive replacing of the individuals which belong
to that being’s spiritual body. Human beings constitute, as already
pointed out, the cells or the spiritual body, in an organism of a higher
order, viz., of humanity. In this organism, an incessant renewal takes
place, as we know, inasmuch as new generations continuously succeed each
other. The same is the case with man’s own spiritual body. As the human
generations in the social body, so the cell-generations in man’s body
replace each other while the man, himself, all the time, remains the
identical individual. The same holds good in regard to the cytoplasm,
or the lower units that build up the cells. Everywhere we meet with the
same phenomenon of renewal and everywhere with the same identity of
the complex individual. This latter originates, develops, and passes
away with a lifetime that bears a certain proportion to its complexity.
While man counts his existence and development in years, the evolution
of society is reckoned in hundreds and thousands of years. The cells
in their turn have a lifetime measured in days, and the units forming
the cytoplasm possess an individual existence perhaps lasting but a few
minutes or seconds.

The circulation in the body, therefore, is not confined to the material
particles but comprises the spiritual body, the living units, as well.
Now, the question is: What is the relationship between man living in time
and these dying and unborn generations of cells, that form his body? Can
we show that these living units, this spiritual body, is as necessary for
man in a future existence as here in time? Then death must evidently be
something else, something infinitely more than we have hitherto imagined
or surmised. The point is to investigate what is mortal in man and what
is immortal, and on this problem we will now proceed to concentrate our
whole attention.




CHAPTER III.

Source of Spiritual Knowledge.


The critically thinking public today might be said to have long ago
relinquished the hope of obtaining a sure and decisive answer to the
question, whether there is an existence beyond the grave. Some people
confine themselves to a faith founded on a smaller or greater probability
for either conception. We want palpable evidence. To many it even appears
necessary to have a look behind the veil of visible matter in order to
satisfy themselves as to whether anything exists within the void. “Nobody
has returned to tell us how it is,” we are often reminded, and this
expression clearly means that complete certainty requires the testimony
of eye-witnesses.

Such a procedure would be at least radical if it were possible. But even
if it were, should we then be nearer the goal? The whole mode of thinking
is naïve, but merits attention especially because it demonstrates
how uncertain the information would be that we would obtain through
this channel. If somebody returned, little or nothing would, in all
probability, be gained.

In the first place how could we know that it was the same person that
returned? It would, perhaps, be best if the soul took possession of
the same body. The absence would then be comparable to, or essentially
analogous with, the condition of the apparently dead. But to begin with,
we could, for good reasons, only ascribe a small value to experience
gained under such conditions, and, further, such an absence would
evidently mean no real separation of soul and body, no real death, and
therefore no real experience of the very thing under consideration.

But how, and under what conditions, would an event of this kind be
conceivable?

Should the person in question suddenly disappear from our sight and
then just as suddenly reappear among us? Endowed with his present
organs and senses, which are closely adapted to earthly conditions,
such a person could see and comprehend only such objects as differed
little or non-essentially from those in the world where we now live. He
would possibly be able to observe conditions on other planets in the
universe, but he would be utterly unable to comprehend the things of a
world abstracted from the limitations of planetary life. If such a world
exists, and some one of us were suddenly removed to it, such a one,
amidst all glories with seeing eyes, would yet see nothing; with hearing
ears, hear nothing; and with feeling senses, feel nothing. In order to
see and grasp what may exist and happen, the observer himself must have
gone through a corresponding radical change. The conditions for the
functioning of bodily organs do not exist there. He must develop new and
more perfect senses; higher, spiritual and bodily faculties which differ
from his present ones as much as the objects of this higher world differ
from the things of earth.

A direct transposition would therefore be without value. In order to make
investigations, a radical metamorphosis is an indispensable condition.
The soul must be separated from its earthly clothing and pass through all
the transformations which commence with natural death. In order to return
here, this person must again go through the same processes in reverse
order. At his re-birth upon earth he would not, in all probability,
differ from other people. He would know as much or as little as we do.

But even if we assume the improbable and imagine that this person
returned to us with the memory of all he had lived through and that he
tried to relate his impressions and experiences, such a report would
be of no use because it would deal with ideas and conceptions entirely
incomprehensible to us. The explanation of this is that man is unable to
comprehend things and phenomena which have not acted upon his present
organs. If we take pains to analyze our boldest and most unrealistic
fancies, we will find that their substance and ingredients are only
greatly enlarged or reduced images of an already experienced reality.
We have never possessed that man’s higher senses, never experienced
the things which those higher faculties are able to grasp, and we are
therefore not in a position to form any idea whatever about such a world.
His speech would sound like a foreign language that we could not possibly
ever learn to understand.

Only in case the person in question could adapt himself to our present
way of thinking and understanding, would such a revelation be of any
importance. But then again the question arises, what confidence could we
have in this man who pretended to possess knowledge about things entirely
concealed from us? We have no means of verifying the information thus
received. It must be taken in good faith, and so the gates to doubt would
again be thrown open. If someone returned, then, little or nothing would
be gained. In this, as in other cases, there is no royal road to truth.
Only a painstaking research will lead to the goal, if indeed it can ever
be attained.

The question is, can investigation in this direction accomplish anything?
If so, we must at least not entertain or present any unreasonable
demands. Such an unreasonable demand would be, for instance, to
expect science to explain the concrete forms which life would take
in a transcendental world. No man ever has or ever will make such
observations. It is even questionable whether such knowledge would be
useful or beneficial to us if obtained. We have enough to occupy us in
our daily cares and earthly tasks. A complete knowledge of life in a
future existence would probably disturb and distract us to such a degree
that we would lose interest for our present evolution in this existence.
It may be sufficient for us to know whether there be another life, and
if so, whether our dealings and actions in the present life are of
any importance for that life. It would, no doubt, suffice if we could
acquire a knowledge with regard to that life corresponding to what we
know about those distant worlds in space which we discern with our bodily
eyes and which we further investigate with our astronomical resources.
The following conditions must be fulfilled in order to make the cases
similar: First of all, such a transcendental world must exist, and emit
rays of light. Further, we must be equipped with some special organ, a
spiritual eye, which we could direct towards it and by which we could
make our investigations here on earth. Do we possess such a spiritual
eye? We answer that our conscience, our religious intuition and the
eternal and invariable laws of thinking are just such organs. That an
ideal world exists, radiating a light of its own, we are able to conclude
from perceptions received through our conscience and our religious
intuition.

Our conscience gives us rigorous directions and commandments, which
sometimes seem to counteract our earthly happiness and show themselves
detrimental to our present success. If our life were confined to this
world, the demands of our conscience were not only useless and injurious
but also in themselves inexplicable. That man, in his religious
intuition, also apprehends a reality of a different kind from the
material one, appears from the fact that all peoples, in all times and
in all stages of evolution, have possessed a religion, as we now do,
a certain conception of supernatural things. It may be granted that
a great amount of delusion enters into all religions. Nevertheless,
religious errors would be inconceivable if man did not apprehend
something supernatural which he wrongly interpreted. Superstition would
not exist at all, because, as we have already pointed out, nobody can
think, speak or form any idea whatever of things that are entirely beyond
all experience. To argue with a person about such never-apprehended
realities, would be like discussing colors with the blind. But now it is
a fact that apprehensions of immaterial substance are so common to man’s
consciousness that if we could find somebody who did not understand what
we said and meant in speaking about these things, we should be safe in
asserting that such a man was not a normal person.

But if all men have an immaterial experience, why do ideas and opinions
differ so about the same experience, and above all why do some people
even deny its existence? The explanation of this surprising contradiction
may be understood when we consider that man also possesses a special
faculty, his reason, which he must likewise employ. With his reason,
man examines and studies all his experiences and strives to bring them
into agreement with the laws of thinking. In other words, he strives to
systematize them into a philosophy. But this is a hard and laborious
task. It is difficult as it is to arrive at right conclusions in regard
to the material world to which our senses are responsive. How much more
must this be the case in regard to the immaterial world. The evolution
of our reason, therefore, is a slowly advancing historical process,
presenting a continuous change in opinions, although, at the same time,
an inner continuity may be traced, an evolution pointing towards a
definite goal.

The harmony which man is striving to establish between his reason and
his other faculties can obtain only during comparatively short intervals
of time. Our reason grows in power and keenness; new observations and
discoveries are almost constantly made; old ideas and opinions do
not, upon closer investigation, satisfy the more developed demands of
our thinking; doubts arise, and this is a necessary condition for all
theoretical progress. Such a doubt, not of the immaterial experience
which we all have, but of the way in which this experience is to be
explained, has been expressed in the theory called materialism, which
is a widely spread doctrine in our time. Natural science in itself is
never materialistic in the sense in which this word is here used, because
natural science does not concern itself with anything immaterial. But if
this be the case, how is it possible that science can have anything in
common with materialism which, strictly speaking, is a doctrine about
spiritual things? We answer that life in this world is joined to and
revealed through the material world. A more complete knowledge of the
nature of matter ought, therefore, to bring about a decision by and by
as to whether the soul is a bodily function or a substance differing
from matter. In other words, natural science must sooner or later arrive
at a stage when it either verifies materialism or gives us tangible and
obvious evidence for the truth of idealism. It was to such a point that
science arrived in the last century when Büchner presented his well
known “Force and Matter,” in which he endeavors to prove that the soul
is an attribute of the body, religion, immortality and so on being only
illusions.

Had natural science then finally found materialism to be the highest
expression of truth? In reality this was so far from being the case,
that natural science, just at that time, had given entirely new impulses
to a higher evolution of religious conceptions. How then could Büchner,
with natural science as a basis, deny all religion, and how can
materialism, in our days, live with undiminished force and vitality? No
other explanation is possible than the one we have already proposed.
When it remained unnoticed that natural science had discovered the
inner, spiritual body, which is the very kernel of the belief in the
body as an eternal part of man’s nature, then materialism was the only
possible alternative for all those who were convinced that the body
contained something imperishable. Materialism, in our days, springs
from the same instinct as the death-cultus in ancient times. It has,
therefore, integrally, something correct and true as a basis, which not
only explains the rapid and wide expansion of this doctrine, but also
the fact that the materialists are continually using data and evidence
which clearly and plainly disprove their own position, although they do
not perceive it themselves. As probably no one has treated this theme in
a manner more characteristic of materialism than Büchner, we will, in
the following study, use his work above mentioned, which may be said to
be typical for the materialist’s mode of thinking and reasoning. It will
here be evident, we hope, that the modern natural science does not limit
but, on the contrary, widens the boundaries of existence, as we receive
from precisely this science the palpable demonstration of the thesis that
all life on this earth has its origin in a higher, immaterial world.




CHAPTER IV.

Importance of Spontaneous Generation.


The manner in which this problem, from a materialistic point of view,
can and must be treated, is not so complicated as we might imagine. The
central thought in all materialistic discussions and investigations may
be briefly expressed as follows: Life is a material force and nothing
else. If this be true, then of course materialism is the only true
religion. Whether God or some other higher being exists, must then become
a question of little or no consequence. Man knows in any case his own
origin and fate. The fundamental religious doctrines will then read:
In matter alone dwell all the forces of nature and spirit; in matter
alone can these forces appear and reveal themselves; nature knows of no
supernatural beginning or continuation; it produces everything; consumes
everything; is itself beginning and end, cradle and grave; by its own
power nature produces man, by its own power it receives him back again.

Against these and similar statements there would be no objection, if it
could be shown that life really has its source in the material world. But
if it can be demonstrated that life never does, nor ever could by any
possibility, originate in lifeless matter, then it is evident that we
must look for some other source.

Let it be our object, then, fully to investigate this problem.

If living beings are produced by material forces, experience must verify
the fact that matter really creates life of itself. In other words, the
“to be or not to be” of materialism is identical with the old question
of _generatio aequivoca_ or _spontanea_, i. e., whether there exists in
nature a spontaneous or parentless generation of living beings.

_Generatio aequivoca_ covers the entire ground of the materialists. Here
the doctrine has not only its principal roots but all of them.

If the materialists lose this foothold, all their natural science
resources are emptied at once, so important is _generatio spontanea_ for
materialism. Only under this form and with this substance can natural
science have anything in common with materialism, which latter, strictly
speaking, is only a religious doctrine, although as such purely negative.
But just for this reason science has for centuries labored to decide
whether this doctrine is false or true.

The question is, does or does not this spontaneous generation exist?
Scientific research has, in all times, occupied itself with this question
in different forms and modes.

The farther we go back in time the more general we find the opinion that
life may arise spontaneously from inorganic matter. That such an idea
should prevail, is, of course, easy to understand. Very little was known
about the propagation of the lower animals and plants. Especially the
very peculiar and complicated development of the parasites and their
passive migrations were practically unknown.

It seemed impossible to understand whence these beings had come, so the
nearest explanation was resorted to, that is to say, that wherever they
were found, they had come into existence “of themselves.” Neither was it
so clearly understood then as now that eggs and seeds are living beings
as well as the fully developed animals and plants. It was thought that
grain must decay in the earth, yea, that this was the necessary condition
for the growth of the plant.

Thus people had daily before their eyes cases where living beings were
generated by substances that seemed inert and dead.

But with a better and more complete knowledge of organisms and
especially of the extremely complicated mode of propagation
characteristic of insects, doubts as to _generatio spontanea_
increasingly arose. It was, however, at a comparatively late time, or in
the middle of the seventeenth century, that Harvey formulated his famous
thesis, “_omne virum ex oro_,” or, as it has been later said, “_omne
vivum ex vivo_,” which we may translate thus: “_Life implies life; all
living beings descend from previous existing parents_,” or negatively,
“_No living being is generated from lifeless matter_.” Thus, for the
first time, the idea was pronounced by natural science that life is a
specific force; an independent principle, that has not its roots in the
material world.

As _generatio aequivoca_ leads to materialism, so Harvey’s formula leads
to pure idealism. That these consequences should have been seen from
the beginning, was so much the less to be expected since even today no
such discovery has been made or could have been made, simply because no
attention has been given to it. Hitherto the only question has been: Is
Harvey’s formula a fact verified by natural science or not? In this form
the battle has raged for over two centuries, often with great vehemence,
and victory has leaned now to one side, now to the other. Finally, it was
agreed that parentless generation was not to be found among the higher
forms of animals and plants which could be observed with the naked eye.
Büchner himself says it has not hitherto been discovered that any higher
or more developed organism may be created by inorganic matter and forces
alone.

“Today,” he says, “it seems to be a general law of the inorganic world
that everything living originates from a parental embryo or else is
directly segregated from the mother-body.”

But although spontaneous generation of the higher animals and plants
seemed doubtful even to Büchner, nothing was at this time settled in
regard to the origin of the lower organisms. With the discovery of
the microscopical organic world, a new field and one more difficult of
access was opened for research. It was now the sudden and unexpected
appearance of bacteria, aspergillus and infusoria in places where their
previous existence could not be imagined, that maintained the belief
in _generatio spontanea_. But by and by we learned to understand the
propagation and life also of these low organisms, their ability to
withstand very high or very low temperatures, and the facility with which
they are spread by the air and, above all, their rapid propagation. It
commenced to be more and more evident that even in the micro-organic
world no parentless generation exists. The investigations by Spallanzani,
and later by Schultze, Schwann, von Dusch and Schröder, were epochal for
the establishing of this fact. Their method, however, left some room
for criticism which was forcefully pointed out by a great number of
scientists, especially by the Englishman Needham.

During all these disputes Harvey’s formula had, however, won such a
stability and approbation that Büchner himself under its pressure
formulated his position in the following cautious words: “Even if
recent scientific researches have more and more limited the ground for
spontaneous generation, it is nevertheless not improbable _that it even
now takes place among the lowest and least developed organisms_.”

It may willingly be conceded that this assertion was in its time by no
means without foundation. But scarcely could Büchner or anybody else at
that moment imagine how soon the hour of decision would strike. Shortly
after 1860 the many centuries old question was finally settled almost
simultaneously by Hoffman and Pasteur. Through the latter’s masterly
investigations it was fully demonstrated that parentless generation does
not exist in the micro-organic world either. Before Pasteur’s simple and
clear evidence, opposition was silenced even so far that the question
has almost entirely ceased to occupy our attention. _Omne vivum ex vivo_
appears now to be an unchallenged truth. Life implies life.

But although science thus rejected _generatio spontanea_, the
materialists nevertheless occupy a very strong position on the selfsame
foundation as formerly, and continue the defense apparently not without
some success.

In spite of Büchner’s real, or perhaps partly pretended, confidence, he
seems to have had a presentiment of how weak the support of _generatio
spontanea_ was, and we find him therefore suddenly reasoning as if its
cause were already lost. Thus he makes the entirely sound remark that
even if at the present time all animals and plants must have parents,
yet nothing whatever is thereby demonstrated in regard to the very
first appearance of life in the universe. “If all organic beings have
parents, how, then, did the first parents come into existence?” he asks.
“When all outer conditions were favorable, might they not have appeared
spontaneously, accidentally or necessarily? Or must the first organisms
have been created through the intervention of some higher power?” Büchner
concedes that this question is extremely complicated, and at first glance
may appear unsolvable without the assumption of some such higher being
who of his own will created the first organisms as it pleased him and
endowed them with the faculty of propagation. “Orthodox scientists point
with satisfaction also to this state of affairs,” says Büchner, “and
they remind us at the same time of the artful and complicated structure
of the world, and warmed by their conviction they see therein the wise
arrangements of a higher, personal creator, who built the world according
to his personal intentions.”

We might, according to Büchner, dismiss these orthodox thinkers with
the assumption “that the first elements endowed with the idea of the
race have been present in space from all eternity in formless chaos out
of which the universe slowly consolidated, and accidentally developed
after the formation and cooling of the planet wherever conditions were
favorable.” But such fictitious reasonings or pretexts, Büchner assures
us, are not necessary. Scientific facts, he says, indicate with great
distinctness that the organic beings on our earth owe their generation
and propagation to the co-operation of physical substances and forces
alone.

After such an introduction we proceed with interest to learn about these
scientific facts, but how great is our disappointment when we find that
Büchner here takes up an entirely different subject, which, if it has any
connection with the question at issue, goes to prove just the reverse of
what he intended. The whole long series of facts to which he now points
is, in a few words, nothing but Darwin’s theory in a paleontological
light. What Büchner shows by numerous examples from fossil deposits, is
that higher forms of animals and plants have slowly developed from lower
forms. But what has this fact to do with _generatio spontanea_? That
higher forms have developed from lower forms only confirms the dictum
that life implies life; in other words, supports Harvey’s law. But it is
something else that Büchner should have demonstrated. He should instead
have shown us that the first organisms owe their existence to physical
forces alone. But on this subject he uses only vague expressions, void of
any real significance, about the slow cooling off of the earth; about the
length of the geological periods, and about favorable conditions; but not
a line to explain what this word “favorable” stands for.

Although Büchner here inadvertently supports something different from
what he intended, his remark nevertheless remains true that the present
mode of propagation proves nothing in regard to the generation of the
first organisms.

Other scientists have gone further than Büchner and believed themselves
justified in extending Harvey’s law to cover not only the present time,
but all times. And the problem as to the first organisms has been
answered in various ways. Sir William Thomson believes that such might
have come to the earth with some meteoric stone, possibly a moss-clad
fragment, from another planet in the universe that had met with a cosmic
catastrophe, and, further, he has even tried to show that this hypothesis
does not involve any physical impossibility.

Opinions seem to be divided, then, as to the validity of Harvey’s law.
This again indicates a deficiency in the law itself, and it is true that
such a deficiency really exists. _Harvey’s formula is not a law; it is,
as yet, only an empirical hypothesis._

It is true that life presupposes life in all the cases we have been
able to investigate. These cases are exceedingly numerous because on
the disbelief in _generatio spontanea_ rests a whole modern industry,
the art of preserving, which in millions of cases daily verifies the
hypothesis. But our experience, in spite of this, does not reach far. If
we continue our observations, who can guarantee that we would not finally
discover that Büchner, after all, was right, and one single case would
suffice. The utmost we can attain by observation is a certain degree of
probability, and if we undertook to prove Harvey’s hypothesis to be a law
in this way, our experiments must be extended _in infinitum_.

In order to reach certainty only under present conditions, we must study
the generation of every now living organism, animals, plants, bacteria
and the like. If it were found then that all these beings have had
parents it would still be impossible to draw absolutely sure conclusions
in regard to previous generations. We should be obliged to extend our
researches through antiquity and primeval ages. If then no gap was
to be found in the series and we perhaps finally traced life back to
the “moss-clad fragment” from another world, we would again face the
question, how the beings on that planet, once in time, had come into
existence? Perhaps there the elements and forces of nature were such as
to create life spontaneously. This question, of course, could not be
decided except through continued observations, which would be obliged to
extend to every point of an infinite universe and back to the dawn of
time. First, then, we should know that Harvey’s hypothesis was a law,
valid without limitations in the past—but also only in the past—and valid
with one single exception, namely, the very first organism, of which we
presently shall speak. In regard to the law’s validity in the future,
we should no doubt possess a knowledge that approached certainty, but
it could not be called absolutely sure. Because, even granted that no
living being hitherto was without parents, it is not logically impossible
that sometime in the future, lifeless matter might undertake to create
organisms. To obtain certainty we must continue our observations until
the end of time.




CHAPTER V.

The Materialistic Demonstration of _Generatio Spontanea_.


This whole method is consequently unsatisfactory. With Harvey’s law
proved in the empirical way, the only way hitherto tried, we are still
unable to decide how the first organism came into existence, and this
is probably after all the most important question. Because, as Büchner
rightly points out: “If life has a supernatural beginning, it has also
a supernatural subsequent existence.” Even if we were observing with
our own eyes the creation of the first organism we would not be able to
say whether it were the result of natural or supernatural forces. The
moment our study commenced, the mystic act of creation would already
have taken place, an act which lies beyond the boundaries of research,
and which we never shall be able to penetrate, however minute or
comprehensive our observations. An entirely different method is here
necessary. Our endeavor must be to find the innermost cause of the whole
series of generations evolving throughout the ages. In other words, we
must derive Harvey’s law from the inner nature of matter itself, show
that this matter has such qualities that it cannot, never could, and
never will, be able to produce a single living being. Only then shall
we have demonstrated that Harvey’s formula is a universal, natural law,
and then it will be not only our right but our duty to draw its logical
consequences.

Is it possible to show that matter possesses such qualities? In regard
to the matter of which our earth is composed we are at least able to
closely investigate its qualities. But our earth is only an insignificant
point in the universe and we must search the entire cosmos. Is not this
impossible? We answer that in many ways, especially through the spectral
analysis, we already know that nature’s elements everywhere are the
same and that they everywhere have the same qualities. If Harvey’s law
can be deduced from the matter we are able to investigate, we have at
the same time shown its validity for the whole of the universe without
limitations as to time and space; because then we may apply in regard to
organic substance Büchner’s true remark as to the products of nature in
times past. “The natural forces,” he says, “that governed the universe
formerly are the same as those whose results we now witness every day
and moment. Earth’s past time is to our thought nothing but an unrolling
of its present. The geologists, guided by their knowledge of nature and
its present laws, have been able with increasing accuracy to trace back
evolution to the most distant ages. Meanwhile it has been established
that everywhere and during all time only those elements and forces have
been active which surround us today. Nowhere has a point been found where
research had to be thrown overboard and an interference of unknown forces
substituted; and nowhere and never will this happen. Everywhere the same
laws were in force and the same matter was found. Historical research has
demonstrated that past and present are subject to the same evolution,
rest on the same basis.” And different it could not be, reasons Büchner,
since life knows no exceptions, does not shirk any inorganic forces, but
is itself only the result of the activity of these forces.

To obtain a definite understanding of the origin of life it is therefore
sufficient to examine the origin of organic matter in our days, and
for such an analysis there is at least no lack of material. Wherever a
tree or a grass blade grows or a seed sprouts there dead substance is
transformed into living; wherever an animal or a plant is decaying,
there organic matter is again turned into inorganic.

The result obtained through such investigations already made, stood
in direct opposition to the immediate observations. Although Harvey’s
formula finally was accepted, it was nevertheless taught _that no
specific life-force exists_.

This contradiction was never fully understood or emphasized during the
last century, and the reason was that the materialistic tendency was
so predominant that nobody noticed that the question of life-force is
the innermost main point, around which not only _generatio spontanea_
and _omne vivum ex vivo_, but also their consequences, materialism and
idealism, are centered.

But in order to deny life-force as an independent principle, some
scientific facts to build upon were necessary and these were not lacking.

Before we state these facts we will in a few words describe the
historical situation.

According to the previously prevailing vitalistic doctrine a specific
life-force existed, present and active in all organic processes. The
conceptions in regard to these processes were, however, very dim, and the
reason was that the problem of combustion had not yet been solved.

This problem may be said to be the very key to the chemical explanation
of an organism. The ancient mystery of fire was first solved by Lavoisier
after Scheele and Priestly had discovered oxygen. The solution of this
complicated question not only became the starting point for a new and
rapid evolution of chemistry, it also almost immediately threw a clear
light on the innermost recesses of the organism.

The elementary constituents of the organism and their origin were known
before, and it now became also possible to explain the great store of
energy that the living being possesses. To assume a specific life-force
seemed superfluous. Life-force, from having been the indispensable
explanation of organic phenomena, commenced more and more to be regarded
as a “back-way for ignorance,” one “of those many side doors that dull
heads employ when they find it too laborious to think about something
that they do not understand.”

It was natural that the materialists would eagerly embrace these ideas.
From the few words with which Büchner introduces his chapter about
life-force, we obtain a clear insight into the opinions that are held on
this subject in the world of natural science. “The mystic notions,” says
Büchner, “that have confused the philosophy of science were invented by
a time possessing but a slight knowledge of nature. To these notions,
which have been thrown overboard by a later exact scientific research,
belongs first of all the so-called life-force. Scarcely has there ever
existed an hypothesis more detrimental to the cause of science than this
singular organic force presented in contradistinction to the inorganic
forces, gravity, affinity, light, electricity, magnetism, etc. If science
were forced to acknowledge such an hypothesis, all we have said about
the immutability of the natural laws and of the mechanical order of the
universe would collapse, and we would be forced to admit that a higher
hand interferes in the course of nature, dictating exceptional laws that
defy all calculations. A break would be found in the natural structure
of the world, science would despair, and all physical and psychical
research cease. Fortunately science has not been obliged to yield to
the irrational pressure of the dynamists, but, on the contrary, has won
everywhere a splendid victory; it has lately gathered such a mass of
self-evident facts to its support that life-force nowadays wanders an
empty shadow along the boundaries of natural science. All those who have
made a closer study of any of the branches of science that deal at all
with the organic world, agree, almost to a man, in the condemnation of
life-force, and the very word is so detested by science that it is always
purposely avoided.”

We may now let Büchner present the real, scientific evidence why
life-force must be charged to the ignorance of a time when knowledge of
nature was but slight. In this way the reader will perhaps obtain a more
direct and at the same time an historic view of the materialistic mode of
thinking.

Above all, says Büchner, it is the province of chemistry to show that the
elements of matter are everywhere the same in the inorganic as well as
in the organic world, and that life substance is unable to present one
single atom not found in inorganic nature and therefore not partaking in
the general flux (_Stoffwechsel_) of matter. Chemistry has decomposed
organic bodies into their elements exactly as it did before with the
inorganic.

All known inorganic forces act identically with respect to _living_ as
to _dead_ nature. We have seen that forces are nothing but qualities
and motions of the smallest particles of matter, the atoms, with which
these forces are invariably and inseparably conjoined. An atom therefore
under all circumstances can only perform the same work, develop the same
forces, produce the same effects, whether it belongs for the moment to
an organic or to an inorganic composition. Respiration, digestion, the
process of growing and segregation are all chemical reactions. Oxygen,
hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen are composed and decomposed within the
organic body in accordance with the same laws that govern them outside.

We have also learned more perfectly how nourishment is transformed into
organic tissues, and we know that through different channels it leaves
the body in precisely the same quantity as it entered, partly unmodified
and partly in other forms and compositions. No one atom has meanwhile
been lost or become another. Digestion is a purely chemical process. The
stomach of an animal may well be compared to a chemical retort, where the
substances there mixed are decomposed and composed exactly according to
the general laws of chemical affinity.

These facts, which may be multiplied _ad infinitum_, enable us to
understand that the difference between organic and inorganic is
non-essential, and that therefore every living being may be considered a
chemical laboratory, whence we arrive at the following result:

_Because daily experience teaches us that all organisms consist of the
same atoms as does inorganic nature, although in different compositions,
therefore no specific organic force, no life-force, can exist. This
latter is not a principle, but a result._ When organic substance
assimilates inorganic and brings it into its own characteristic
condition, this is not done through a specific force, but through a kind
of infection, whereby the molecular conditions in the organic substance
are transferred to the inorganic.

But not only does organic matter consist of the same elements that
are to be found in inorganic nature, but the organism as a whole is
nothing but a bodily mechanism not differing from other machines except
in its more complicated construction. Water, says Büchner, which must
be considered as the foremost and most important part in all organic
beings, and without which all animal and plant life were impossible,
water penetrates, flows and sinks according to the laws of gravity, not
differing by the breadth of a hair in its action within and without the
organism. The circulation of the blood is as mechanical as we could
wish, and the anatomic contrivance that causes it bears a surprising
likeness to mechanical apparatus made by man’s hand. The heart is
provided with valves just as a steam engine; the valve movements produce
audible sounds. The rise of the blood from the lower parts of the body
to the heart against gravity can only be made possible by a mechanical
arrangement. The bowels convey their content mechanically; mechanically
the muscle movements take place, and mechanical motility characterizes
men and animals. The human eye obeys the same laws as a camera obscura
and the ear catches the sound waves in same way as does any other vault,
and so on.

Science, therefore, entertains no doubt that the living organism is a
machine as well as the steam engine, i. e., a system where chemical
affinity produces heat, electricity and muscular energy.

Now, are these facts, pointed out by Büchner, true and correct?
Undoubtedly they are in all essential respects eternal truths, and we
may add that they are just as important foundations for idealism as
the materialists have claimed them to be for their opinion. But before
we take up this subject let us see how the materialists derive their
philosophy from the facts mentioned.

There are many other objects in this world, of which we might almost
verbally repeat what Büchner says about organic matter; for instance,
windows, doors, locks, bricks, houses, etc. In these objects also there
is not one atom to be found which was not present in the raw material
of which they were made. But does the raw material itself produce these
things? So Büchner reasons. He says: “_Because all organic matter
consists of inorganic raw material, therefore the raw material, itself,
has made the organic matter. Because the organism is essentially like a
steam engine, the building material itself has made the organism._”

This headlong way of reasoning and concluding is not characteristic of
Büchner alone, but applies equally to the whole materialistic school
during the past century.

We have not said that inorganic raw material is unable to produce
organic substance spontaneously, which substance later upbuilds the
organism, but for the present this remains an open question to which
as yet the materialists have not given an answer. But before we enter
the discussion of this extremely important question, we will in this
connection mention another discovery of natural science which seems
exactly to support the materialistic trend of thought, a fact, therefore,
that crowns, so to speak, their whole philosophy.

Up to the year 1828 it was thought that organic substance could be
created only by the force of life. But Wöhler unexpectedly succeeded in
producing organic compositions from inorganic substances, a discovery
which was followed by a series of others in the same direction. It is
with evident satisfaction that Büchner calls our attention to these facts.

In order to show the necessity for assuming a life-force, he says, people
have reminded the chemists that they are unable to produce organic
compositions, that is, the peculiar grouping of the elements into those
ternary and quaternary compounds which owe their existence to an organic
being, endowed with life and life-force, and they have added the amusing
remark that the chemists must produce living beings in their retorts—make
men—if there be no life-force and if life be only the result of chemical
processes. The chemists have not been at a loss for an answer. They have
made dextrose, several organic acids and bases, and recently they have
also succeeded in producing _hydrates of carbon_. Evolution has proceeded
rapidly in this direction, and today alcohol and precious perfumes are
made from coal, candles from slate, Berlin blue, taurin and innumerable
other bodies—formerly believed to be exclusively of animal or plant
origin—from the simple material that inorganic nature offers us.

The materialists have a custom of not considering themselves under
obligation to do more than point to some scientific facts, without
investigating whether these facts support their speculations or not.
Faithful to this custom, Büchner stops just where his own researches
should have commenced. Büchner has not written a textbook on physics or
chemistry. He has undertaken the extremely serious task of investigating
whether modern natural science has produced results which show that
nothing but matter and its forces, and consequently no soul, no eternal
life, etc., exist. Our first demand of such an analysis would be, to
put it moderately, that the facts cited really prove what they are put
forward to prove. But to this demand neither Büchner nor his followers
pay any attention. Büchner might, for instance, in regard to the facts
last mentioned, have taken the following questions as the starting point
for his investigations:

It is true that the chemists have produced artificially certain organic
compounds of inorganic elements, and they will probably go much further
in this direction. But is this really something to be wondered at, when
all organic substance is composed of inorganic elements which, wherever
they exist, possess the same qualities? The question is how this organic
substance is formed. Does it appear spontaneously in the chemist’s
laboratory while he himself stands idle, observing the phenomenon, or
must he interfere, guide and plan the activity of the chemical forces
in order to obtain these artificial compounds? Why should not something
similar take place in the laboratory of inorganic nature? There is, as
far as our experience goes, no organic substance to be found due to the
spontaneous action of known natural laws. What is the reason of this? How
is organic matter formed in nature? And, further, is there no difference
between the organic matter produced by the chemists and that present in
_living_ nature? And if this difference proves to be that the former is
_not_ organized while the latter always is, why cannot the chemists
produce organized matter?

If Büchner had proposed these or similar questions and taken time to
think them over, he would have obtained a different result, but instead
he breaks off his argumentation just where it should have commenced.

Consequently the fault in the materialists’ process of thinking does not
lie in the facts used as foundation for their argument. The premises and
the beginning are correct. Just because organic matter consists of the
same elements as inorganic, just for this reason natural science can
decide whether the physical laws are able spontaneously to produce such
matter and such machines. The materialists have stopped after providing
the introduction; the continuation and the end are lacking. They have
overlooked the whole series of scientific facts that stand in necessary
correlation to the starting point. We have therefore only to resume the
interrupted demonstration and will then endeavor to make the latter part
as simple and comprehensible as Büchner made the former.




CHAPTER VI.

How Is Organic Matter Produced?


The essential in matter is force. Strictly speaking, we comprehend
nothing but forces. Every body manifests itself as resistance necessary
to overcome if we wish to remove it from its place.

What remains of the body if we think of it as deprived of this counter
force? At least nothing remains that we can touch or by which we may
obtain palpable evidence of its existence. Neither does there remain
anything that we can see, as seeing depends upon resistance to light,
reflection of the ether-waves. If the mountain exerted no resistance we
would pass through it without feeling or seeing anything whatever.

True, there is perhaps matter—for instance, the ether—which we neither
see nor feel, but which still exists. This matter is then qualified
by some other form of energy by which it manifests itself. Thus we
comprehend ether as light, heat and colors, all forces, as well as
gravity, electricity, etc.

Already from these suggestions it is evident that force is the only
substantial thing in the material world. Without force, matter is nothing
that may be comprehended either by the senses or by the reason. What
we call matter is nothing but different kinds of energy.[1] We have
space-occupying energy, chemical, electrical, mechanical forms of energy,
and so forth.

How are these forms of energy related to each other? Between forms so
different as tones and light, colors and mechanical work, there is at
least no connection apparent to external observation.

For a long time it was also believed that no such relation existed. It
was only after 1840 that several scientists made the startling discovery
almost simultaneously that physical forces may be transformed one into
another. It proved possible to transform a certain quantity of heat into
an equal quantity of mechanical energy, which again might be turned into
equivalent quantities of electricity, light, chemical energy, etc. It was
further found that these processes might be undertaken in the reverse
order, so that the original form of energy could be restored in unchanged
quantity and with unmodified qualities. Nothing was lost and nothing was
added.

Recent science is founded entirely on these facts, which later
generations probably will consider as the greatest of all the discoveries
of the last century.

This law of the permanence and the mutability of force is of immediate
importance to materialism. As long as it was thought that the forces
of nature were separate and different from each other, it was easy to
imagine that the more inaccessible or mystic forms stood nearer life,
yea, were life itself. The absurdity of such an idea is now obvious,
since it has been shown that the physical forces may be transformed
into one another and therefore are not intrinsically separate, but
fundamentally the same force, acting differently under different
conditions. Now, if life were a form of material energy, any form
of physical force might be transformed into life and consciousness,
into spiritual and moral forces. Life and consciousness might then be
artificially produced, and we would rack our brains in order to find the
mechanical equivalent of the intellect, try to measure it in amperes
and volts, etc. But nothing of this kind is done, simply because it is
impossible, as presently we shall see. _Life cannot be transformed into
any form of material energy, and, vice versa, no form of material energy
can be transformed into life._ Life and physical force are, as to nature
and substance, essentially different principles.

Although the law just referred to about the permanence and the mutability
of physical forces thus seems rather to disprove materialism, it was
not for this reason chiefly that we have related it. Our purpose is to
find a basis in this fact from which the fundamental contrariety between
organic and inorganic matter most easily may be explained, and thereafter
to enter into this differentiation just as far as is necessary to decide
the main point as to whether one form of matter can spontaneously produce
another.

We recollect that the materialists endeavored to make the difference
between organic and inorganic compounds as slight as possible. The former
consisted of exactly the same elements as the latter and these elements
had exactly the same qualities in one compound as in another.

However true this may be, is not meat nevertheless something different
from limestone, although limestone may easily be found that contains
nearly all the elements present in the meat? In starch, sugar, fat, etc.,
precisely the same elements enter as in water and carbonic acid, but no
materialist denies that there are important differences between these two
groups of substances.

What is it, then, that essentially separates the two classes of matter
(nothing but the most essential factors concerns us here)? If we ask
this question of chemistry, we are answered that this quality is
combustibility. Organic matter is combustible; inorganic is not.

But why should organic matter be combustible? Because fuel is as
necessary to the organism as to the steam engine. To both their physical
source of power is heat, and even the engine receives it through the
combustion of organic substances. All the fuel that is generally used is
of organic origin, although we seldom think of this fact.

But why can we not fire an engine with inorganic products? Because these
cannot burn, and the reason again is, that they are already burned. If
this be true, they must once have been fuel themselves, must once have
been in a burning state. How do we know this? Because the inorganic world
consists almost entirely of chemical compounds that are only formed by
combustion, when this word is used in its widest sense.

If these suggestions are correct, organic matter is to inorganic as fuel
to the products of combustion. In the inorganic world the latter have
been transformed to fuel which in a renewed combustion reproduces the
same products as those of which it once was formed.

If this be the case our problem may be thus formulated: Can inorganic
products of combustion again form combustibles spontaneously? Can
carbonic acid or water through the _spontaneous activity of physical
forces_ be transformed into sugar, starch, fat, etc.?

In order to decide if this be possible we must first know what combustion
is, and we will therefore briefly explain what this term means.

Combustion is a chemical process, it is said, and this definition may be
true, although it may also be misleading. In daily speech combustion is
generally identified with the phenomena of light and the generation of
heat, which we immediately observe, but chemical processes can neither be
seen nor felt, because they take place in the inner world of matter which
hitherto has proved inaccessible to human observation. Yea, chemical
processes are so foreign to the experiences of our senses that chemistry,
the science of these processes, is entirely founded on the deductions of
our reason. The premises that our reason uses for its conclusions belong
to the physical world which is the outer side of matter that faces us.
The phenomena that accompany combustion belong to this world and are,
therefore, strictly speaking, not chemical but physical phenomena.

But even if these phenomena of light and heat, of which the latter
especially interests us here, belong to the world comprehensible to our
senses, they must nevertheless be intimately connected with the inner
chemical process because heat is developed in nearly every chemical
reaction. Heat is not created from nothing; there must be a cause for
this force, and the cause cannot be anything but the chemical energy
which in the chemical process is transformed into heat. In few words:
What we generally term combustion cannot be identical with the actual
chemical process. The light and the heat must, on the contrary, be
considered as the external results of the chemical process, its physical
effect.

By a close study of this physical effect we have also been able to
explain what happens within matter itself. As it is necessary to
understand this in order to comprehend how heat is developed, we will
endeavor shortly to outline the present scientific conception of the
chemical process called combustion.

From the qualities of matter we have concluded that the bodies we see are
composed of extremely tiny particles called molecules, which, however,
are so small that with our optical resources we never shall be able to
observe them. Even the smallest particle of dust visible to the eye must
be considered as containing an enormous number of them. With molecules,
however, we have not reached the limit of the divisibility of matter.
They may themselves be divided by chemical forces into smaller material
units called atoms, and these latter are therefore the building stones
of which matter is ultimately composed. Now neither the atoms within the
molecule, nor the molecules within the visible body, are packed closely
together. They are separated by comparatively great spaces. But if these
building stones are separated from each other we might expect that they
would behave like the grains in a sand heap.

How can material bodies then be solid, hard, tough, etc.? The reason is
that the spacing in question is regulated by other forces of essentially
different kind. We have attracting as well as repelling forces, such as
tend to increase as well as to reduce the distances between the particles.

We shall first consider the attracting forces, and these are called
cohesion and adhesion when exerted between molecules. The mutual
attraction between the atoms within the molecules has been named affinity
or chemical energy.

Turning again to the form of energy acting in the opposite direction,
we find just the force we are in search of—heat, which is the physical
source of energy of all living beings.

That heat increases the distances between molecules is already evident
from the fact that all bodies increase in volume when heated, a process
which may be continued by further supply of heat until the solid becomes
a fluid, and the fluid a gas.

In solid bodies the attracting forces have predominance. The molecules
are arranged with definite spacing and in definite positions so that
the body assumes a certain external shape. If such a body is exposed to
heat the molecules are removed from each other and the cohesion becomes
correspondingly feebler. Finally a point is reached when the molecules
are so far unfettered that they are at liberty to move with respect to
each other. The solid has then become a fluid and may through continued
heating enter the gaseous state. The cohesion is then entirely conquered
so that the molecules move freely in all directions independent of each
other.

Similarly, heat influences the atoms of which the molecules are
composed. Even chemical attraction gives way to heat so that all bodies
at sufficient temperature are decomposed into free atoms or elementary
constituents.

We have seen that heat performs mechanical work in so far as it separates
masses from each other. But heat not only performs this work but is the
work itself, or is identical with the movement of these particles.

Consequently a certain quantity of mechanical work is equivalent to a
certain quantity of heat and _vice versa_, and it is this transformation
from one form of energy into another that takes place during a chemical
reaction. The mechanical energy of the atoms is here converted into heat
which may again be used for the other forms of mechanical activity.
Through the chemical reaction that heat is regained which previously was
utilized in separating the atoms or sustaining their movement, and this
explains why heat is developed in chemical processes. If this development
of heat is increased to a certain point, or, which is the same, if the
reaction takes place with greater violence, the common phenomena of
fire and light appear. But even without these, every chemical process
may be called combustion in a wider sense, that is, if we consider the
production of heat as the characteristic external effect of the chemical
force.

At sufficiently high temperature, then, all matter must be in an
incandescent gaseous state, and _vice versa_ at a low temperature it is a
solid mass.

With these short notes we have also outlined the history of our own
earth. The same gaseous state in which our sun is at present belonged
once to the earth according to science of today. During enormous periods
of time the incandescent matter of the earth radiated light and heat
into the cold universe. Finally so much heat was lost that chemical
attraction could assert itself. Regarded as a sun, the earth was then
dying and it entered upon the chemical era. During this state the
elements combined with each other according to general chemical laws into
such compounds as were the necessary outcome of their atomic weights,
valence, and positive or negative qualities. In this connection it is
sufficient to point out that these processes must go on incessantly until
compounds have been formed in which the chemical forces have reached
equilibrium and rest. In the case of our planet these products formed the
solid crust of the earth, the primeval rock, the mineral world, further
water and finally air, the oxygen and nitrogen of which may be considered
as remains of the elements. Furthermore, according to a law known to
science as that “of the least resistance,” chemical reactions proceed
from compounds which have more energy to such as have less, wherefore it
follows that each product was as poor in energy as the conditions at the
time permitted.

If we now especially give our attention to the combustion taking place
in chemical processes, this era may also be called the period of
combustion or the general world-fire, names which are exact even if we
use combustion in the common, limited sense of oxidation. Oxygen is
considered to constitute about one-half of the solid crust of the earth,
and when to this quantitative preponderance is added its extraordinarily
strong affinity to other elements, these must with necessity burn into
oxides just as has been the case.

It is therefore with the products of combustion, that is to say, the
ashes and the remains from a general colossal world-fire, that the earth
enters its planetary state, at which stage it becomes suitable for the
creation and evolution of living beings. It is from burnt substances that
the organisms must form the combustible matter that constitutes their
material clothing. How can this be done? In the only possible way; that
is, by again decomposing the products of combustion into their elements
and bringing them into such combinations that a new combustion may take
place. Are the products of combustion able to perform this transformation
spontaneously? They have just lost the fund of energy that could have
made them combustible and this lost heat must again be stored up and
therefore taken from some other source, as no heat can be created from
nothing.

When the chemical forces had once reached equilibrium and rest, the earth
might then be compared to an immense corpse thrown into space and which
must remain in the same state eternally, or until it met with a cosmic
catastrophe. Not the slightest movement or variation could now take place
spontaneously on its surface. If a change happened it must have had its
cause in another source of power, and two such sources existed. One
was the earth’s own internal heat, and the other the sun, and we must
therefore consider if either of these, or both together could produce
combustible organic substance.

In regard first to the earth’s internal heat we might immediately
eliminate this source of energy, as it has no direct connection whatever
with the origin of organic matter, an assertion so commonly agreed upon
that we need not dwell further upon it.

Infinitely more important is the sun, which has been and is the cause of
most of the changes taking place on the earth’s surface after its cooling
off. The sun causes the circulation of the air and water and thereby the
whole series of disintegration and decay, the history of which is written
with indelible letters in our geological sediments and formations. These
formations tell us that new oceans and continents, new minerals and rocks
have successively been formed, but nowhere that organic substances were
ever built up spontaneously under the sun’s influence. The processes of
decay, on the contrary, proceed in the entirely opposite direction.

Through them nothing is formed but compounds poorer in energy than
before. In decaying, the products of combustion absorb, if possible, more
oxygen, become more burnt or oxidized, so that this whole process may be
called an after-burning, a more thorough combustion of the remnants from
the first general world-fire.

The spontaneous activity of nature’s forces, then, go in a direction just
opposite to the one necessary for the production of organic substances.
And anything else was not to be expected. The products of combustion
resemble fallen weights, slack bow-strings, water below the fall, etc.,
whereas combustible organic matter might be compared to lifted weights,
set bow-strings, water above the fall, etc. If matter has once fallen
from a higher to a lower level of energy it can never spontaneously
return, especially as it has just lost the necessary store of energy.
As impossible as it is for the swift current to turn its course, or for
the fallen weight to lift itself or for the discharged bow-string to
set itself again, so impossible is it for the products of combustion
spontaneously to turn into combustible substances.




CHAPTER VII.

Organic Matter as a Product of Art.


From the previous chapter we now draw the extremely important conclusion
that all organic matter is a _product of art_, that is, a product which
the forces of nature cannot produce. Spontaneously these forces only
create natural products. Products of art belong to an entirely different
category; they owe their existence to a foreign interference in the
natural order of the world and have a cause that does not fall within
the limits of a mere mechanical causality. But before we discuss this
subject, let us first thoroughly understand what we mean by saying that
organic matter is a product of art.

Materialists have shown that the organism closely resembles a steam
engine, but they have neglected to point out that the similarity extends
also to the mode in which they are produced. Everybody is probably
convinced that the forces of nature have never made and never will make a
steam engine. If the same might be said in regard to the machines which
we call organisms, then materialism would be disproved. But why, to begin
with, cannot the forces of nature build steam engines? We must be able to
present the reasons for this statement.

If we first consider the building material, we find this in the factories
in the form of plates, bars and ingots of iron, copper, lead, tin, etc.
Where do these metals come from? Nowhere in nature is such material
found.[2]

Humanity had inhabited the earth thousands of years without having an
idea of the existence of such substances as iron, copper, lead, etc. The
metals are chemical ingredients in our minerals and from these minerals
they are extracted by complicated, artificial processes. The ore is often
lifted out of the depths of the mountains; it goes through a series of
treatments which the forces of nature cannot spontaneously undertake. We
will here give only a moment’s attention to the process of reduction, or
the separation of the metal from its natural compounds. This, as we know,
is done in our blast furnaces, where the iron is reduced through the
presence of coal and other suitable substances in certain proportions.
If we now remember that the heat in our furnaces often reaches about
2000° Centigrade we see at once that the sun may shine on our mountains
throughout eternity without ever producing the temperature necessary for
the reduction.

But the engine is not yet completed. The plates must be first rolled and
shaped, the ingots must be melted and cast into frames, shafts, bearings,
etc.; in short, the raw material must be formed into all those numerous
parts of which the machine is composed. The engine is from beginning to
end a product of art.

There is especially one circumstance pertaining to all these
transformations that merits a closer attention. If we remember that all
the material used in a product of art is taken from nature, and besides
that, all the processes in making and shaping the raw material are
carried out through the employment of natural laws, we might still ask
the question, why physical forces should not enter spontaneously into
the necessary artificial combinations for producing this result. Until
we have pointed out the quality in matter which prevents this, we have
not completely demonstrated the inability of natural forces to build an
engine spontaneously.

This quality has been named _vis inertiae_, the inertia of matter, one
of the most important natural laws that exist. What does this law teach
us? It says that matter cannot itself change its condition. If a body is
in motion it can never come to rest unless another force at least equal
to the primary opposes the motion. If it be at rest, it cannot impart
motion unto itself; energy, applied from without, is necessary. Inertia
keeps the earth moving around the sun; a stone thrown into the air would
proceed everlastingly with its initial velocity if the attraction of the
earth did not interfere.

Because of this quality, then, matter remains in its natural equilibrium.
An engine would never be built because the ore would stay in the
mountains and the metals forever remain in their compounds. Every product
of art requires a foreign interference in the material world; matter,
in consequence of its inertia, presents a determined and often very
energetic resistance to such an intervention.

Exactly the same reasons that prevent natural forces from building a
steam engine, cause also their inability to produce an organism, and this
in a much higher degree because the organism is in a still fuller sense
a product of art. The organic building material, instead of being plates
and ingots of iron, copper, lead, etc., consists of carbon, hydrogen,
sulphur, phosphorus, chlorin, potassium, sodium, magnesia, etc., or both
metals and metalloids of which the former, on account of their negative,
and the latter because of their positive qualities cannot exist in a
free state. From the minerals found in nature these substances must be
extracted for organic purposes. The elements are different, but otherwise
we may verbally repeat in regard to organic substance what has been
previously said about the steam engine.

It is the creation of organic matter by art that the materialists have
neglected to take into account. Therefore they look upon the organism
just as a new race, suddenly succeeding humanity, would view our steam
engines. These machines would certainly appear very mysterious to the
earth’s new inhabitants. But a growing civilization would undoubtedly
discover that all the material used in the engine is taken from ores
to be found in nature. If now somebody would draw the conclusion that
these ores themselves had made the engine he would reason as do the
materialists today in regard to the organism. The parallel does not halt
in any respect, but it is sufficient in this connection to call attention
only to one or two of the more important components of the organism.

Organic matter, or combustible substance, consists of carbon and hydrogen
which in an organism are comparable to the iron in a steam engine. But
nowhere in nature is free hydrogen or free inorganic carbon to be found.
The carbon was burned to carbonic acid in earth’s first combustion, and
similarly the hydrogen was burned to water long before the conditions
for organic life existed on the earth.

From these original products of combustion, burnable organic matter is
formed by decomposition of carbonic acid and water into their elements,
carbon and hydrogen, and by their subsequent combination through feebler
chemical forces into sugar, starch, etc., which substances through a new
combustion are again turned into carbonic acid and water. The natural
forces cannot spontaneously undertake these transformations that only
take place because of artificial arrangements. The processes of nature go
in the entirely opposite direction, as we have seen.

As a matter of fact, the reduction of carbonic acid and water is done
through the direct assistance of living beings. From the sun they take
their power. But how ineffective the sun would be, left to itself,
is seen already by the fact that carbonic acid is disintegrated at a
temperature of 1300° C. and water only at 1500°. Products of art must be
resorted to, and we know that by lenses, burning mirrors, photographic
cameras and the like the sun may be forced to accomplish results that
otherwise would be impossible. Such artificial apparatus, then, must be
the chlorophyll granules in the cells. More strikingly yet, these organs
of the cell may be compared to our blast-furnaces, as it is just in the
chlorophyll granules that the reduction of carbonic acid and water,
according to science, takes place. If these artificial devices, invented
and constructed by the lower living units that constitute the cell, did
not exist, the sun might shine throughout eternity on water and carbonic
acid without producing organic building material.

This material is and must be the product of art. If the forces of
inorganic nature spontaneously produced sugar, starch, etc., these
substances must have the same quality as our rocks, minerals, etc., of
being products of combustion, which in such a supposed case, perhaps,
would be made burnable if transformed into water and carbonic acid. We
would obtain a creation turned upside down and analogous to a world where
the bodies we now use as weights would remain unsupported at certain
distances from our earth. If we were to use such a body as a weight in a
clock, we would have to wind it down instead of up.

Because organic compounds are products of art, living beings find
themselves obliged to direct the physical forces to destroy these
compounds or restore them to their inorganic state more speedily than
these forces would have done if left unaided. The processes of decay,
performed by micro-organisms, are as necessary in the economy of life as
the reverse processes. Otherwise the earth would soon be so covered by
corpses that life must cease simply for lack of inorganic raw material.
It is true that we might imagine living beings as adapting their
organization to this condition and for some time directly utilizing the
accumulated stores of organic matter; but such periodical interruptions
and changes would disturb the continuity of life’s evolution. To avoid
this, there is no way open to restore equilibrium except the one in which
it is now done.

No effect, whatever its nature, can exist without cause; and further,
every effect must have a sufficient cause. If, therefore, we have
established that natural forces can no more produce organisms than
steam engines, we have also proved that these things would never have
come into existence if the organic forces had been left to themselves.
Neither organisms nor engines would exist, because they have no cause
in the material world. The products of art are due not only to other
causes, but the relationship between cause and effect is also different
with them from what it is with the products of nature. Every product of
nature has its cause in a previous condition of matter. The cause goes
before and the effect comes after in time. The connection between cause
and effect is so intimate and complete with regard to natural products,
that we may trace the series of occurrences backward and forward in time
without other limitations than those imposed by a deficient knowledge of
the qualities of matter. Such a connection between cause and effect has
been termed mechanical causality, which reigns without exception in the
material world.

Of entirely different kind and nature is the series of causes pertaining
to the production of objects of art. In their capacity of purpose they
are themselves the physical cause of all the work that precedes their
birth. When the product of art is finally ready, the effect has then gone
before the cause. Such a connection is called teleological causality in
contradistinction to the mechanical one, where the cause always precedes
the effect.

But although the product of art is the nearest cause of its own
production, it is not the primary one; it is itself the result, not of a
cause to be found in the material world, but of a _foreign_ interference
in the mechanical causality, and points therefore to a supernatural
ground which, by a closer investigation, will be found identical with a
living will. The will feels the want of other things than those which
natural forces can spontaneously produce. Natural products act as
incentives on the will, spur it to break through mechanical causality
so that physical laws by a judicious guidance may be forced to produce
artificial products that better satisfy the desires of the will. If
natural laws could comprehend and judge these things, they would consider
them all as miracles, whereas, from the point of view of the will, they
are so much the more natural as they are exact expressions of the needs
and desires of the will.

But not only the order of cause and effect, even the tie between the two
is entirely different in teleological causality from that in mechanical.
While the natural product is an effect that cannot fail to appear, the
product of art, on the contrary, is an effect that primarily never
could be expected, because it has no cause in the material world; but
further, if it is forthcoming, the tie between cause and effect is so
loose that such a product may be left and will remain in any stage of its
production. It may be just commenced, half ready, or nearly completed;
be better or worse, be a failure, and so on, whereas the natural product
springs forth of physical necessity from its cause and never can be
different from what it is.

Wills and physical forces then stand against each other as two
fundamentally and radically different causes. A will may neglect to
do what it ought to, may be idle, industrious, undecided; a physical
force cannot leave undone what it has to do, can never be called idle,
industrious or undecided.

That man is able to produce objects of art we have sufficient evidence in
material invention, from the simple stone-ax up to the most complicated
machines. But if man can create products of art he must himself be a
supernatural cause, as natural products produce nothing but their own
kind. And not only he but also the beings that build up his organism must
be supernatural causes, as we have seen that all organic matter _ipso
facto_ are products of art.

In all these different forms and species of products of art we possess,
therefore, boundless masses of obvious and visible evidence that life
is not a quality of matter. In order to break through the mechanical
causality and introduce into the material world effects which never could
be spontaneously forthcoming, life must have a supernatural origin, must
be a principle independent of matter.

By resuming the demonstration that the materialists had broken off, we
arrive therefore at the same conclusion that natural science had already
drawn before from external observation, and with which the question of
the nature of life-force is inseparably connected. The qualities of
matter itself demonstrate clearly that spontaneous generation never has
been, is not and never will be possible, and the tremendous labor spent
during centuries to prove this by external observation seems almost a
waste of time. We might as well pick out a table full of stones and sit
down expecting some of them to undertake a flight around the room, as to
expect living substance to come forth spontaneously from dead matter.
The intrinsic qualities of matter tell us that only hope for the former
occurrence can warrant faith in the latter.

We thus consider it demonstrated that Harvey’s formula is a universal
natural law and we may now draw its logical consequences: _Life is not a
material force; no living being can therefore arise from dead matter;
all life has a supernatural origin in a higher immaterial world_.




CHAPTER VIII.

The Soul and the Cells.


Living beings are alive because the very substance in them is living.
Life belongs to this substance exactly as materiality belongs to matter.
As living substance can exist only in the form of living individuals, all
living beings fall outside the limitations of time and possess individual
immortality without exception. _The cell, therefore, is as immortal as
man._ But if this is the case, the fact that the duration of the earthly
life of man is different from that of the cell must now at last appear
in its full significance. During man’s life a series of cell-generations
have lived, acted and disappeared, although the phenomenon here, as in
the body of society, passes comparatively unnoticed because the cell
is invisible to the naked eye. Of course we observe a daily growth
of nails, hair and of the whole outer skin. This outer layer consists
exclusively of dead cells, which daily scale off by the millions through
wear, washing or otherwise, and are replaced by other dying cells from
the inner living tissues. The same process of dying and renewal takes
place in the organs of the cell. As man’s lifetime often depends on the
trade he has chosen, so it is with the cells in his organism. Those
that perform heavy work, as for instance glandular cells, often die in
the moment their mission is filled. This process commences even in the
individual’s embryonic state. With lower animals, whose generation takes
place outside the mother-body, we can often observe with the naked eye
how whole organs normally die and disappear.

If the cells as well as men are immortal beings, the question naturally
arises: what becomes of these incessantly dying cell generations? The
answer must necessarily be apparent if we can show, First, _that the tie
between the soul and the cells is indissoluble so that man’s organism, i.
e., his spiritual body, consists of the same cell-individuals in a future
life as here in time_; Second, _that the cells at the same time are
self-existent and so independent of the soul, that in a future existence
also, as here in time, they can and must build up man’s organism
independently_.

In such case no reason can be advanced that would prevent the dying
cell-generations from immediately arising to a new and higher evolution,
which, as we will endeavor to prove, must be identical with the
upbuilding of the higher, transfigured body which man shall possess in a
future life. This form of resurrection must be common to all organisms
because they are all built according to the same general plan and are
consequently subject to the same general process of evolution. Men are
themselves the cells in another higher organism, humanity, which entity
cannot rise to a richer life in another world otherwise than through its
upbuilding by the dying human generations under the new conditions that
exist over there.

As a preliminary experiment in order to find out if the soul is
indispensable to the life of the organism, or if the cells possibly
might do without the soul, we may appropriately remove the latter from
an organism and thus directly observe the importance of the soul for the
cells.

But how can this be done, or at least, how may we deprive the organism
of all influence from the soul? The physiologists have proved the
possibility of such an experiment. It is fully established that the soul
communicates with the body through the brain proper, or the cerebrum,
and experience shows that this important organ may be removed and yet
the body continue to live. We will here give briefly the results of such
experiments made with animals.

If the brain be removed from a dove or a hen, the bird often recovers
from the radical operation and may remain alive for months and even
years. But the dove has become an entirely different being. Immobile she
sits on the same place. If she were not heard to breathe she might be
taken for a stuffed bird. She lacks ability to judge her position and
resembles a living machine that breathes, and swallows the food brought
into her bill. The higher qualities of the dove are entirely lost. She
shows no signs of fear and is incapable of initiative. She remains
sitting in the same place and will not even fly down from small heights.
If thrown into the air, she flies until her wings are tired or until she
strikes an obstacle that she makes no effort to avoid. From the first
day she must be fed artificially, but she digests her food as usual. The
heart, the circulation of the blood, the respiration, in short, all the
vegetative functions of life continue regularly. Such a state has been
characterized by Flourens as a continuous sleep without dreams.

The same observations have been made with regard to dogs that have been
deprived of a large part of the brain.

With lowered head and dead eyes, such a dog moves about indifferent to
everything taking place around him. He shows no signs of fear, envy or
joy. Neither threats nor friendly speech impress him. He never partakes
in the barking of other dogs and is, as a rule, mute. Only should he be
hungry he might set up a howl. Although indifferent to the strongest
light or sound, he is not entirely blind or deaf. At the stronger sounds
he might move his head slightly. All higher life is lost, but he digests
his food and all vegetative functions continue _just as_ regularly as if
he were in normal condition.

Observation of the effect of certain accidents and diseases intimates
that man forms no exception but that the same results would probably be
obtained from similar experiments with him. Though such experiments are
out of the question, we can, however, in many different ways ascertain
that the soul of man is also inactive in the vegetative functions of his
organism. In earliest childhood this is perfectly evident. To possess
a soul that has no functions is, as far as the result is concerned,
identical with possessing no soul.

If we observe a child during the very earliest period of its life we
will find that it behaves essentially just as the animals referred to
above. Even the child remains in the position it is given and is unable
to comprehend what happens around him. The child would likewise starve to
death unless food were brought to his mouth, but he swallows and digests
the nourishment normally. The movements of the heart, the circulation of
the blood and respiration all take place as normally as with the fully
developed man during sleep when his soul also ceases to function.

The fact that the vegetative processes of the organism are not governed
and controlled by the soul may be observed by anyone also during his
conscious state. In regard to respiration we may repress it only for a
few minutes. A command is soon given by certain cells in the central
nerve-system which _against_ the soul’s will brings the organ in question
into action. Experience tells us that strong agitations generally disturb
the vegetative processes. Sudden fear, for instance, accelerates the
heart’s motion. Therefore these processes take place more evenly with
animals deprived of their brain just because disturbing influences from
the soul are then impossible.

Thus it is certain beyond doubt that the cells not only execute but
regulate and control through the central nerve-system a multitude of
functions in which the soul does not take part. But just as certain it
is that there are many functions which the cells could not perform
without the co-operation of the soul. Vision, hearing, smelling, tasting
and feeling would be entirely meaningless to the cells without the aid
of the soul. The same is the case in a high degree with the motions of
the body which also require such a higher guidance. The dove could fly,
the dog walk, and so forth, but the motions were relatively purposeless.
The predetermined plan was lacking. The cells could assimilate the food,
when brought into the body, but they could not search it in nature. Such
action requires a power of combination that exceeds their measure of
intelligence.

We see consequently that the cells may do without the soul in such
functions as are not related to the exterior world comprehensible
through our senses. Here they need the guidance of a higher, more
developed intelligence. In the outside world with its more complicated
relations, the soul is to the cells very nearly what we mean by the word
_Providence_. The soul performs, in the interest of the cells, such a
higher, regulating and guiding function.

The organism, then, is divided into two sections, separated by a sharply
defined boundary. As independent and autocratic as the cells are in one
of them, is the soul in the other. This bisection in two widely separated
spheres is in itself remarkable, but may be explained, if we remember
that the organism is an individual composed of lower individuals. As
different as these classes of individuals are in their nature and
faculties, equally incongruous are also the realms in which they dwell.
The cells move in the atomic and molecular world. To them the molecules
and atoms appear with a clearness comparable to the plainness with which
the exterior world reveals itself to us. It is natural then that the
cells attend to the vegetative functions of the organism which just fall
within their sphere of life, a sphere of which the soul can obtain
knowledge only indirectly by way of deductions. Equally obvious it is
that only the soul can employ the organs of the body, the functions of
which fall within the visible world.

We have now endeavored to obtain an understanding of the importance of
the soul to the cells by depriving the latter of the direct influence
of the former. This resulted from the removal of the brain, the organ
by which the soul more directly expresses itself. But the soul is not
actually removed from the body. It still remains in the whole cell-mass.
The brain itself consists of cells, in which the soul is not present
except as in all the other cells. The difference is only that the
brain-cells are developed for the functions of thought, whereas the cells
in the other organs are intended for their specific purposes. In order to
remove the soul from the body we must remove the life from every cell.
The soul, as we intend to show, is inseparably connected with every
particular cell-individual. But in order to understand how the cells may
be at once independent of, and yet intimately united with the soul, we
must first know what an organism really is. Its nature and fundamental
idea is the only thing that can explain this remarkable relationship. But
it is just here as to the essential qualities of an organism that the
conceptions are generally very dim and vague.

Commonly the organism is thought of as a very complicated mechanism whose
members and organs mutually depend upon each other. The organism is what
the word implies, a tool. But every tool is intended for somebody’s
use. Who this one is, is not said, simply because it is considered
self-evident. If it be a human organism, it is obviously the man who uses
it; if it be an animal organism, it is the animal, and so on. That this
is a truth, cannot be denied; but still it expresses only half the truth
and scarcely that. Every organic body is used directly by the individuals
that form its building material. The human organism is a society of
cells, and it is these latter that first of all use the body’s organs for
their purposes. But so dominating are the old ideas about the body, that
even the cytologists themselves have not been able to shake them off. The
cells are continually studied from man’s point of view, but _what man may
be from the cell’s point of view is never thought of_.

We do not hereby deny all justification to the old conception. The body
is also an organ for the soul. The latter, as experience shows, uses
the body for its own specific purposes. But this takes place only to
a somewhat limited extent. The incomparably larger part of the soul’s
work, cares, and endeavors, is devoted to finding means to satisfy bodily
wants. But so far as the soul provides for the necessities of the body,
it acts as organ for the cells. When man believes that he is running his
own errands, he is in reality carrying out the missions of those beings
that compose his body. These latter demand for their purposes, if not
all, yet at least the largest part of all the work the soul performs in
this world.




CHAPTER IX.

The Fundamental Qualities of an Organism.


In order to illustrate the fundamental characteristics of an organic
structure in general, we will begin with comparing it with what it most
resembles, namely, a complicated mechanism. The likeness is so striking
that the very dissimilarities become instructive.

First of all we notice the parts of which the machine is composed.
What these parts are to the machine the members and organs are to the
organism. Every part, like every organ, has a certain duty to perform
which it incessantly repeats. The work of the machine is divided among
the parts as that of the organism among the organs. As the organ, so the
part of the machine can do its share only when in right position and in
right order.

The most obvious similarities are now exhausted. The parts of the machine
are actuated by external, but the organs by internal, forces. The
organism is a living machine. No organism, whether organic or mechanic,
labors for its own sake. Every such apparatus exists for somebody’s
use. But while those that employ a machine stand in outer relation to
the same, those who utilize an organism are beings that themselves
constitute the organic machine-parts. These are not composed of dead
atoms, but of living individuals. The organism is a society which puts
the organic machinery into service. It is the social tie that connects
the individuals which otherwise would be a multitude of isolated beings.

In all organisms there are as many organs as actual wants among the
individuals that compose it. Because these individuals are kindred, they
have common needs and are therefore able to use the same organ. Every
particular individual requires the assistance of all the organs and must
therefore stand in such relation to them all that he can utilize the work
of any one. But he himself enters as a working member only in one organ,
whose work is the only one he can immediately press into his service,
and even this only in certain cases. All other organs stand in more or
less distant relation to him. How, then, will he be able to utilize them?
Only so that the organs make themselves present in his own organ, and,
so to speak, reach him their different products. Like every citizen in a
community, each organ ought to have a system of circulation throughout
all the other organs to transfer the results of its work where it is
needed. If, however, each organ were provided with such a distribution
agency this would be an extravagance inconsistent with the concentration
of forces that the very idea of an organism implies. Instead of many such
systems we find therefore in every organism but one, whose sole purpose
is to circulate the products of the various organs, and thus, so to
speak, make each organ represented in every part of the whole community.
We find that every organic building is constructed in this way to suit
the individuals that form its building-material, and so of course it must
be, since it was built for that purpose by the same individuals.

The consequence is that the degree of development an organism possesses
is closely related to the state of evolution reached by the individuals
which constitute it. The more perfected the organism, the higher and more
developed also are the necessities it is able to satisfy.

The way in which independent living beings build such an organic
machine may be defined as “division of labor.” Every organism is a
union, founded on the division of labor, between a multitude of kindred
individuals which thus combine their isolated forces. But a large mass
of individuals cannot merge at once into an all-embracing entity. This
result can only be reached by a series of higher and lower intermediary
units, each defined by its particular share of the total labor.

A closer study of the organisms will show that they all without exception
are composed in this way.

The cells in any organism in nature combine into higher and higher units
as follows:

The primary unions of the cells are the tissues, where all the cells
perform the same function in the same way. Of these tissues is formed
the nearest higher unit, the organ. As the tissue was a union of cells,
the organ is a union of tissues. Then we have a system of organs. To
each such higher system a more comprehensive function is assigned. By
distributing the total labor among the different systems these merge into
the organism which unites the whole cell-mass into one well-organized
community of working cell-individuals.

Human society is similarly composed. The difference is only that in
one case the citizens are cells, and in the other they are men. Of an
organism in nature we only see the members and organs, but not the cells;
in human society, on the other hand, we only observe the cells or the
human individual, but not the body of society. The cells combine into a
solid body; humanity is spread over a surface. Human individuals, because
of their greater perfection, move in space more freely and independently
of each other than do the cells in their realm. These and other
differences do not, however, disturb the general organic structure. This
has everywhere the same fundamental qualities. Society is essentially
only a vastly enlarged copy of the same model that man traces in his own
bodily organism.

Through a similar division of labor the work of the community is split
into trades, corresponding to the tissues in the natural organism. As the
cells in one tissue, so the men in one trade are incessantly occupied
with the same work. Out of several trades are formed the social organs. A
social organ consequently is a certain community or district performing a
certain part of an industry. This has been called “territorial division
of labor.” Several such communities make up an organ-system or an
industry. A few such larger units merge into the single unit, the entire
mass of human individuals as a whole.

The cells of the individuals in an organism are consequently at once
building-material and builders, and in their latter capacity are endowed
with wants and aspirations that with natural necessity force them to
organization without conscious plan or purpose. Necessity is the teacher
that tells them how to organize. Some speak of a social instinct that
man does or should possess; but its existence has never been shown.
On the contrary, it is only by those needs that can only be satisfied
by a community that men are driven to unite socially. Similarly with
the cells. Only by building up an organism are they able to satisfy
their common wants. What society is to human individuals, the natural
organism is to the cells. No trade or industry can be found in the state
that does not serve to provide for some common want of the people, and
no tissue nor organ exists in the natural organism but for satisfying
collective needs of the cells. These collective needs are at the same
time the higher needs of the individuals. The organism provides the
power that the isolated individual does not possess. Organization allows
that specializing of effort which so essentially contributes to the
productivity of labor. The more limited the operations each individual
has to perform, the more rapidly and perfectly are they done.

Although the cell lives in a world inaccessible to our immediate
comprehension, we still possess means to ascertain that it has the same
fundamental qualities as man. We observe manifestations of life in the
cell corresponding to those of sensitivity, feeling and will-power in
man. The cell’s comprehending faculty has been termed irritability and
its power of action spontaneity. From certain physiological phenomena the
conclusion has also been drawn that the cell likewise possesses memory.




CHAPTER X.

The Organic Relationship Between the Soul and the Cells.


Hitherto only little study has been given to the spiritual qualities
of the cells, and such investigations must always meet with certain
insurmountable difficulties. The reason is that we only judge others by
ourselves and we are therefore unable to understand the spiritual life of
any being that is not one of our kin.

If a being stands higher or lower than ourselves its spiritual
experiences, if not entirely different from ours, are at least limited
and modified by the being’s own power of comprehension. If, however,
these beings show manifestations of life that we understand, we must
conclude that their spiritual or mental life is correspondingly active.

Such a position we occupy with regard to the beings called cells. From
the result of their activities we conclude that they, like men, are
endowed with aspirations capable of the highest conceivable evolution.
What economic necessities are to man, the arterial blood is to the cell.
The blood is an artificial product which nature no more gives to the
cell than it gives clothes, food, houses and the like to man. Nature
provides the raw material and cell and man alike must learn how to adapt
it for the necessities of life. This operation, however, involves great
difficulties. All such artificial products stand in inverse proportion
to the power of the individual. The more perfect they are the more
impossible it is for the individual to produce them. Only as citizens in
a community, that is, through organization, are the individuals able to
produce such products as exceed their isolated forces.

Although we cannot comprehend the inner life of the cell, nor the world
in which it dwells, we are able to judge, from the wonderful perfectness
of the organisms built by cells, that they have reached in their world
and measured by their power a higher state of development than man. It
is not only possible but highly probable that the human individuals will
sometime build an organism of the same perfectness, but as yet they have
not done so. The cells have long ago passed the stage of organization
that characterizes human society at present.

From the fact that the first purpose of every organic structure is to
serve the individuals of which it is composed, it follows that nobody,
except these same individuals, can build the organism in question.
Independently the cells build the human body here in time and they must
do the same in the future life. The organism cannot exist in other
surroundings than those for which its organs are adapted. But this
adaptation can only be effected by the individuals that form the building
material of the organs, because the organs just express their relations
to the world in which they exist. Thus it follows of necessity that man’s
resurrection or transition from one world to another must be identical
with the dying cells’ upbuilding of that organism which man shall possess
in a future life. Any other form of resurrection is neither possible nor
conceivable. It is further confirmed by the relation that exists between
the soul and the cells. This relationship, as we intend to show, is such
that the soul receives its entire individuality, all its forces and
faculties, from the cell-organism, the previous resurrection of which
therefore is an indispensable condition for man’s own rise to another
life.

If the mass of a body is living the body itself is alive. The whole
receives its qualities from its elementary components. The organism
itself is a living being. From the point of view of the building material
the organism is a society composed of independently living individuals;
from the point of view of the whole again it is a living individual of
higher order than the individuals that form its social side. Man is a
cell in the social body, but is himself composed of lower individuals,
which again consist of more primary units.

Man, considered as being possessed of a body, _is an individual composed
of lower individuals_.

We now ask the question: What is the relation between the higher
individual and the lower ones? This is only another and more exact form
of the question: What is the relation between the soul and the body?
Because, what is the body and what is the soul? The body is the sum of
the lower individuals, or, in other words, it is the organized mass of
cells. The soul, as the feeling, thinking and willing principle, is the
real spiritual unity in this mass, or just what we denote by the word
man, or the higher individual. To ask, what is the relationship between
the higher individual and its lower constituents is therefore the same
as to ask, what is the relation between the soul and the cells? Take away
the latter, and there is nothing left of the body. The cells mean here
everything, and it is to them consequently that the soul can be thought
to stand in relation.

Formerly the problem was to explain how soul and body as two
substantially different entities were related to each other. They had
then nothing in common, nothing to encourage an interaction. If now
the relation holds between the soul and the cells we have at least
commensurable quantities to deal with.

So far all is well. But now other difficulties arise. We can and must
ask, how an interaction is possible between the soul and the cells even
if they are formally, according to their inner nature, kindred beings? In
other respects they are not so separated and different that a spiritual
intercourse is inconceivable. As inaccessible as is the inner life of
the cell to man, so incontiguous is the spiritual life of man to the
cell. These beings are so widely separated that they cannot possibly
communicate directly with each other, and yet in order to establish a
mental or spiritual interrelationship, such communication is just what is
necessary.

The soul and the cells must have something in common that is of a purely
spiritual nature. As the spiritual always is a comprehending substance
with nothing but comprehensions as its content, the something common to
both must consequently have the form of common comprehensions. Not all
comprehensions, however, incite to activity and a smaller number yet call
forth a co-operation of independently living individuals. But, obviously,
the perceptions that concern us now must be of the latter kind. The
comprehensions in general that induce a being to activity we call wants
or appetites. In its desires a being conceives its own ego in want of
one thing or other. The feeling of discomfort, accompanying the want,
naturally causes the endeavor to satisfy the want through a corresponding
effort. The incitement to activity then is purely spiritual. Are the
soul of man and the cells subject to such common needs, requiring
their co-operation? If so, at least their wants or appetites cannot be
wholly congruous. Such are only to be found in entirely similar beings.
But different wants are satisfied in different ways; each requires a
carefully adapted form of activity. All direct, immediate co-operation
of the soul and the cells is therefore impossible. Only man with man, or
cell with cell, can co-operate in the primary sense of the word.

But an indirect working alliance is not yet precluded. Though themselves
different, the two beings may comprehend wants identical in substance,
but not in form. The formal discrepancy would require not only different
modes of satisfying the need, but also different kinds of activity;
but the common substance might yet under certain conditions so unite
and interlink the different labors, that the result would show a mutual
co-operation.

We shall presently see that the soul and the cells are so united with
each other that _the connecting link is the organism per se_. From the
point of view of the cells the organism, with its different members and
organs, was nothing but the collective expressions of individual wants.
Now man comprehends as his needs only the wants of the organs; in other
words, the collective wants of the cells are the individual wants of the
soul. Experience teaches us that the soul has no direct comprehension
of the cells, but only of their organic unions. To prove this it may be
sufficient to point out that before the discovery of the microscope, man
knew absolutely nothing of the existence of these beings, much less that
they were the all-governing forces in his own body. But also in other
ways we may ascertain that the comprehending power of the soul does not
reach beyond the organs. This is apparent from the different significance
the physiological processes have for the soul and for the cells. If we
consider the most important of them all, our nutrition, and ask ourselves
for whom the nourishment is really intended, we find that it is for the
cells and for the cells alone.

The food benefits the soul only if it is utilized by the cells. But the
nourishment that the soul craves does not satisfy the cells. Hunger and
satisfaction are not even simultaneous in both, at least not as regards
the same food. As a rule, the soul comprehends hunger when the cells are
satisfied and _vice versa_. The soul’s hunger ceases the moment suitable
food in sufficient quantity is introduced in the stomach. But this does
not help the cells. Because, if the food remained in the stomach, to the
satisfaction of the soul, the cells would soon die of starvation. The
nourishment in the stomach is of the same importance to the cells as the
provisions stored in the warehouse of the community are to the human
individuals. These also would die from hunger if they let the victuals
remain in the stores. The people must undertake to distribute, prepare
and consume the food. Similarly the cells would starve to death unless
they prepared the food in their common storage to suit their wants. The
nourishment must be transformed into blood through the whole complicated
process we call digestion. When this is done, the cells are able to
satisfy their craving, and simultaneously a new hunger-feeling arises in
the soul. Although it is the _same food_ that satisfies both parties,
it is the same food administered in different forms, at a different
time, and in a different mode. We are concerned with dissimilar beings
possessed of wants at once different and yet most intimately associated.

The connection is not difficult to understand. When the soul comprehends
the need of the stomach, it is the collective want of the cells that
comes to expression as the individual want of the soul. The different
needs receive in different form an identical substance and this fact is
obviously the connecting link between the soul and the cells. We might
without difficulty carry out the same reasoning in regard to respiration
and all the other physiological processes of the body.

From what we have said it is evident that the soul and the cells employ
the body differently; but for the sake of clearness this ought perhaps
to be further accentuated. The difference may be thus expressed: The
soul acts with the members and organs of the body as units, whereas the
cells perform the work of the organs as individuals. It would be easy
to explain what this implies if we could point to similar conditions
in human society. But no exactly similar institutions exist there, at
least not to the same extent. They would exist if the ideal socialistic
state was realized. The cells in their sphere have carried through a
communism of the most rigid form. Their social organs then do not work at
the cell-individual’s own initiative, but only upon the command of the
central power and under its guidance and control. But even in the present
organization of mankind, we find a few organs which offer a suggestive
comparison. Especially is this the case with the defensive organ of
society, the standing army, which is entirely under the control of the
central power and acts only upon its command and under its control.

As to its composition the army is a mass of independently living
individuals, co-operating so as to form an organic whole. All the work
this unit performs is done by the thousands of soldiers of which it is
composed. If the government decides to use this organ, that is if it
declares war, we know that it leads, arranges and controls the army as
one unit. It is not concerned with the soldiers as individuals, but only
as organized masses.

Exactly analogous is the relation between the soul and the organs,
composed of cells, in man’s organism. Here also the cell-individuals
perform the work of the different organs. The soul is not concerned
with the cells as individuals. It governs, guides and superintends the
movements of the members as elements; that is, commands the cells as
organic masses.

We now consider the following facts established. The soul and the cells
are different beings with different wants. They do not feel or comprehend
in the same way and can therefore not have immediate perceptions of
each other. However true this is on one side it is on the other just
as certain that they are so intimately connected as to form the same
organism through the medium of which they feel their mutual wants and
therefore must have some comprehension of each other. This strange and,
as it may seem, contradictory relation depends on the fact that the union
between the soul and the cells does not extend to their whole entity.
We have seen that the soul comprehended only the collective not the
individual wants of the cells. Within certain defined limits therefore
they have a common substance that causes their marvelous co-operation
through the body.

To understand and explain this coöperation we must make clear how the
soul and the cells in their _innermost_ nature are united. And we shall
learn this by going to the bottom of the meaning of the expression that a
common substance so governs their relationship that the collective wants
of the cells become the individual wants of the soul.

How then are the soul and the cells intrinsically connected?

The answer may be derived in two ways. We might take both the subjective
and the objective side of the wants as our point of view. If we first
consider the subjective side the relationship between the soul and the
cells may be stated as follows:

We have previously pointed out that in its wants a living being perceives
its own ego as related to something else. This is an axiom that needs no
demonstration. If now the soul comprehends the collective wants of the
cells as its own, this can only mean that the soul comprehends that part
of the cells’ inner nature which expresses itself as their collective
wants, as a part of its own ego. Again the cells within the same limits
on their part comprehend the soul’s inner nature as belonging to their
own individuality. The connection within these limits is so intimate that
they cannot comprehend themselves without at the same time comprehending
each other. The soul must consequently perceive the body as its own body
because the same wants that cause the cells to upbuild the soul also
belong to the soul’s own entity. On the other hand the soul in conceiving
itself cannot comprehend the cells as such because the identity is not
extended to their whole individuality.

When a being conceives the wants of somebody else as its own wants it
is at the same time directly influenced by the other. Thus the soul
and the cells act upon each other throughout the body. A will of the
soul takes with natural necessity the form of a common impulse upon the
cells bringing them into action in the will’s direction. If the soul,
for instance, wishes to move an arm or a hand, a collective want is
simultaneously created in the cells that form the organ in question to
execute that movement.

We arrive at the same result by considering the fact that the different
wants of the soul and of the cells are identical in substance. The
same substance cannot enter into and define different beings unless
they themselves enter in and define each other. As now both parties
comprehend wants identical in substance, the soul must necessarily belong
to the cells so that it is the ground for their collective wants. But
these wants were the cell-individual’s higher wants, manifested in the
organization of the body. The soul therefore is potentially present in
the cells in the form of their higher wants and is consequently developed
along with the upbuilding of the body. Only when this is ready is the
soul’s entity developed. The soul must then comprehend the organism as
its particular body when conscious of its own ego, but the cells do not
enter into the soul’s entity as individuals and are therefore not present
as such in man’s consciousness.

For this organic co-operation the soul and the cells need no language, no
signs to communicate with each other. It is not even necessary that they
are aware of each other’s existence. It is sufficient that each party
comprehends its own wants and acts for their satisfaction according
to its own nature. If they do this their co-operation through the body
receives a simple and at the same time complete explanation.

But however natural this interaction is, it is nevertheless a wonder
above all wonders. The world that exists to the soul does not exist to
the cells, and _vice versa_. They have an entirely different conception
of the realm in which they live. They have different apprehensions,
feelings and wants and perform accordingly different functions. But
in spite of this they are, as we have seen, within certain limits so
intimately connected that these different comprehensions and labors are
interlinked with each other, regulating each other as accurately as the
wheels in a clock.




CHAPTER XI.

Resurrection.


From the relationship existing between the soul and the cells it appears
that the former cannot live a life independent of the latter. The soul
receives its entire individuality, all its qualities, forces, and
faculties, through the organism built by the cells, which therefore
must exist before the soul can exist as the real unity in the organism.
This does not mean that the soul is an empty form void of independent
substance. Even before the cells have combined into an organic unit the
soul is potentially present in them in the form of the wants that force
them to upbuild the organism, and this organism is that of the soul, not
that of the cells, of which each possesses its individual organism.

But if the soul is potentially present in the cells it is only through
them that it can arise to a higher life. We have already shown in another
connection that a direct transposition would be useless and meaningless.
Endowed with his present organs adapted to earthly conditions, a man
suddenly translated into the glories of a higher world would with
seeing eyes yet see nothing, with hearing ears hear nothing and with
feeling senses would feel nothing. To comprehend what there exists and
happens, man’s own organism must have undergone a corresponding radical
transformation. He must have new, more perfect senses, higher spiritual
and bodily faculties, differing from his present as far as the objects in
this higher world differ from those on earth. This transfigured body can
only be organized by the same beings that built it here in time. The soul
is inseparably united with these beings and is where they are.

Here in time man commences with a cell and with a cell he must begin
in a future life. This first cell with which man enters his next
form of existence cannot logically be any other than the first dying
cell-individual. As no atom, so no elementary unit of the living
spiritual body is annihilated. Viewed from our present existence death
cannot mean anything to the departed cell-generations but the cessation
of life and activity in the world responsive to our senses. In reality
they rise to a higher evolution under different conditions and this
evolution must be identical with the upbuilding of the glorified body man
shall possess in a future life.

This form of death and resurrection, natural because it is founded on
the idea and nature of the organism, is common to all living beings and
must so be, as they are all built according to the same general plan and
therefore essentially subject to the same evolutionary processes. The
birth and death of the lower individuals in whole generations is known
to be a universal phenomenon in every organism and we will now endeavor
shortly to explain this process.

If the soul enters as a real part in every individual cell, it does not
belong differently to the first generation than to the last or to the
whole series of intermediary generations. But here in time man lives only
in the generation existing at the present moment. The generations that
in the past successively formed the spiritual substance of his body have
already gone out of time and those that are coming have not yet made
their entrance. Man’s entity is thus split or distributed upon a series
of successively existing moments, each of which contains only a certain
limited part of the organism, and the latter has therefore in reality a
far broader extent than is seen at present.

But time confines and restricts man not only in this, but in all
respects. To take another example, we know that man possesses a multitude
of different faculties and talents. But in time he cannot utilize them
all. As a member of society he devotes himself to a certain trade or
profession. Now there are thousands of different possible activities and
therefore thousands of different talents that every man might develop
but never can, simply for lack of time. Time is not even sufficient to
fully develop one human talent in one definite direction. Man has at
his disposal only the present moment, and in each moment he can only
think one thought, perform one act, satisfy one need. It is said that
man should develop all his faculties _evenly_, but so long as he lives
in time this is an impossibility. As a matter of fact man can only live
this life piecemeal, and in this time-existence proper we have the
explanation of the fact that man distributes his body over a series of
cell-generations.

The law of the indestructibility of matter and energy is valid also in
the ideal world and this necessarily since it is a demand of thought
itself.[3] Applied to spiritual substance, which can exist only in
the form of living individuals, the law may be expressed, “All living
beings are immortal.” If therefore the cell-generations that in the
past composed man’s organism can no more be annihilated than the future
generations can be created from nothing, this implies that man has an
individual existence not only after but _before_ his entrance into this
world. If such be the case we must be able to derive and explain our
earthly life from this pre-existence. Can it now be shown that man’s
conditions in his pre-existence are such that he needs and must go
through an evolution in time? In that case history may perhaps give
us a hint how to answer the question, or would this pre-existence be
an entirely new thought? By no means. Pre-existence is and must be a
fundamental idea in all religions because they all suppose that man
emanated from God through an original act of creation. That the Christian
religion especially has this basic idea Victor Rydberg has fully
demonstrated in a treatise entitled “Man’s Pre-existence.”

But although we may say that all religions teach a pre-existence we
do not mean that this idea has been or even could have been rightly
understood. We might expect just the contrary, as pre-existence is
connected with the common conception that man’s soul as well as the
material world was once created in time, in which case pre-existence can
only mean an existence extending very far back in time. There was a time
when God existed but not man, which latter, as being created, must have
an _existence separate from God_ even if he may in other respects be
called His image.

This form of belief in pre-existence shows the same shortcomings and is
subject to the same objections as the whole orthodox theory of creation.
As we can and must ask how a perfect God could create an imperfect,
that is, an evolutionary world, we might also ask, why was man created
with the necessity for an evolution in time when he never could develop
anything but what God had implanted potentially in his being? Instead
of explaining evolution this theory only makes it so much the more
mysterious.

Besides this conception, however, the religious intuition has surmised
that the connection between God and man is profoundly deeper and more
intimate. Man does _not_ have an existence separate from God. This
intuitive thought, intensified in highly religious souls, has led them to
preach, _that man possesses a life in God; is part of His own being, is a
living member in His perfect organism_. If this be true, why, again, must
man go through an evolution? Is he not as unchangeable as God Himself?




CHAPTER XII.

Man and Infinity.


It is the perennial honor of Sweden’s greatest philosopher, Christofer
Jacob Boström, to have satisfactorily explained the extremely difficult
and complicated question with which our last chapter concluded. He has
shown that man, exactly on the supposition that he is an eternal part
of God’s being, requires and must go through an evolution in time.
According to Boström, religious intuition has found the truth that man
is an eternal idea in God, a living member in His organism. But Boström
has also understood and considered the difference implied in thinking
of man as a member in God’s organism and in thinking of this member as
living its independent life. In the former case man possesses the same
qualities as God; in the latter, these qualities with corresponding
limitations.

For an illustration of how all limited beings are incorporated in an
absolute personality, Boström likes to fall back on the numerical system.
Spiritual beings form a series, as it were, of lower and higher entities,
where the latter contain the former pretty much as higher numbers
contain the smaller. Boström distinguishes between positive and negative
attributes, and means by the former those attributes without which the
being cannot be thought, and which it therefore in one sense contains.
So for instance in the number ten, all the previous numbers are positive
attributes because ten cannot be thought without them, which, however,
does not imply identity with either of the lower numbers. On the other
hand all the following numbers are negative attributes to the number ten
because this may well be thought without them. It contains them only if
it is considered as one point in the numerical system, in which case it
has them all as attributes. Thus, still referring to the number ten, this
may be considered complete within itself without considering the higher
numbers, whereas if we wish to comprehend it fully we must see it as a
link in the numerical system. Ten would not be the half of twenty without
the latter, and so on. The existence of the higher is after all required
for that of the lower as fully as the existence of the lower is necessary
to that of the higher.

Because each entity is higher according as it has a larger number of the
rest as its positive and a smaller number as its negative attributes, it
follows that the highest entity, or Deity, has no negative attributes but
only positive ones, which of course is the true meaning of the expression
that God is the most perfect being.

As a lower being is more perfectly defined when considered included in a
higher, this fact must be the reason why all finite, rational beings in
their evolution try to assert themselves in the higher beings, up to the
highest, by whom they finally obtain their full scope and in whom only
they live their complete life.

But if Boström had lived to study the modern cytology he would have found
a more adequate comparison within man’s organism, and one that perhaps
in several respects would have modified his conception of the world of
divine ideas.

God is related to man as man is, not to the cell, but to the lower units
of which the cell is composed. Between God and man there is at least one
other organism that we know of, namely humanity. But if we overlook this
and for simplicity’s sake imagine the relationship as that of man to cell
it should be evident from what has been previously said that man is and
must be something else to God than he is to himself.

To God he is what the cell is to man, a living part in His organism, and
in this capacity he possesses all the perfect qualities of that organism.
Living his independent life, man is in the same position as the cell
in his own being, when the cell is thought of as living the life it is
confined to by its less perfect organism.

Although limited to that life the cell may literally be said to be man’s
image—but an image of a very singular kind. The cell does not reproduce
man’s traits as does a photograph or a statue, but within its lower realm
it mirrors the fundamental qualities of the original on a very reduced
scale.

These limitations can not be conceived by the cell as such because
they are natural to it and belong to its entity. The cell is and must
feel itself as perfect in its realm as man in his. Only if the cell
could compare its conditions with man’s, these limitations would be
apparent to it, and such a comparison the cell really undertakes within
certain limits. Into each feeling of want enters a comparison between
the possessed and the desired. In the higher wants, then, that drive
the cells to upbuild man’s organism we have a manifestation of such a
comparing power of the cell. Experience shows that the cell may live
in a veritable natural state, but it is also, because of the presence
of the soul in its innermost being, capable of a high culture for the
development of which it receives constant impulses and stimulations from
the soul.

In the same sense man may be said to be the image of God. Living in the
world and the natural state, to which he is confined by his relatively
imperfect organism, man has the qualities of God with corresponding
limitations. But even in this state he feels the spirit of God present
in him because he is an original part of God’s own organism. In his
conscience and in his religious feeling man not only comprehends
distinctly the presence of God in his inner being but constantly
receives also impulses, incitements and inspirations to develop that
perfect life and heavenly kingdom, of which he is called by his high
origin and divine birth to become a citizen.

What the conscience and the religious feelings are to the will, the
logical laws of thinking are to the reason, and in the latter, man finds
God as immediately present as in the former. Indeed, logical laws are the
form in which God himself exists.

Because of God’s presence in the eternal laws of our thinking, man is
able to appraise himself and his condition with an absolute measure, and
can in this way obtain a certain knowledge of God’s world and of his
perfect qualities. He has only to abstract all wants and limitations
from such qualities as have a positive content, because lack of want is
perfectness. We shall now undertake such a valuation with respect to
man’s need of evolution here in time, which quality, as all the others,
can be explained and understood only through its connection with the
corresponding quality in the absolute being.

It is as natural to God to be without an origin and an evolution as it is
to man to have them, and we might therefore ask how man in this respect
can have anything in common with God, a condition which, as we remember,
was indispensable for any comparison whatever. To make this point clear
we may express ourselves in a more familiar way. We might speak of time
and existence in time, instead of origin and evolution, as the latter are
only forms of time.

Is there then a moment in time that has a corresponding meaning for God
and the limitations of which we must abstract in order to understand
God’s quality of being eternal? It is by analyzing the relation between
time and eternity that we hope to receive an answer to the question why
man must undergo an evolution in time.

The most conspicuous want in all that exists in time is its lack of
duration; everything has a beginning and an end. With this lack of
duration a corresponding lack of reality follows. The real is real, only
as long as it lasts or only in the present moment. Everything past has
ceased to exist and is therefore no longer real, and the future is unreal
because it has not entered the present.

The real in time is identical with the present, which therefore must be
the moment most like eternity and the limitations of which we have to
remove.

First of all, the present in time suffers the want of ceasing and
sinking back into the past, into unreality. We can overcome this only
by raising everything past from its grave, so to speak, and drawing it
simultaneously into the present. To the eternally present, nothing past,
ending or ceasing can exist.

On the other hand the present in time suffers the same want in the
opposite direction, inasmuch as everything future is excluded therefrom
and this future growing reality must therefore be drawn into the eternal.
Neither past nor future can exist to God; He lives life undividedly,
without limitations, and needs not, as man, plot out his existence in a
series of moments. Eternity then is not identical with unending time; it
is a different form of existence, related to time as the perfect to the
imperfect.

Difficult as it is to explain what eternity implies as the perfect form
of existence, it is no less difficult to comprehend the infinite wealth
of content that such a form includes. We will therefore give a few brief
suggestions in this direction.

How poor in content is everything present to man, and likewise how
defective and unsatisfactory is his whole life here in time. As a matter
of fact we can in each moment only think one thought, perform one act,
satisfy one want. We read a book and we are only conscious of one line
or one sentence at a time. We listen to a musical creation or admire
an exhibition of art, and we only hear a few harmonies, or see a few
details of one picture, more distinctly at the time, and so on. How much
richer would not our life be if we could think the book from beginning
to end at once, hear the harmony of the entire oratorio, now focus the
beauties in smallest details of the whole picture-gallery to one point.
It even dazzles our spiritual eye if we enlarge the range of such a rich
intuition to encompass not only our nearest environments but our whole
earth or possibly our entire solar system, and yet we have only taken one
step on a road that has no end. Our solar system is only an insignificant
point among those innumerable worlds that form the Milky Way, beyond
which the astronomers surmise the existence of other hosts of stars
without limit. If we now could share in life at every point in this
infinity of worlds, would then our conception of the content of eternity
be exact? By no means. We must include in this present moment everything
that has happened on these worlds since the dawn of time and similarly
all that will occur in the millenniums to come. Is the eternal measure
now full and overflowing? By no means. Above us and below us there are
beings to whom other universes exist as infinite in all directions as
our own. All these infinities of infinities must be drawn into eternity,
but then, surely, the measure must be full. By no means. We have all
this time moved within the realm of phenomena, that is to say, in the
finite world; all this is only a faint shadow of the wealth that eternity
contains. God lives in a light that no man hath seen nor yet can see.

In this light, in this perfectness, man is a part of the divine entity.
This life in God’s eternal consciousness is man’s primary and original
existence. Only in a secondary meaning is he a self-existent personality
and is then no more identical with God than the cell is with man.

Man as an entity for himself must have the natural limitations of the
part. Conceived by God man is eternal in the divine sense, but conceived
by himself man’s eternal life is clothed in the limitations we call time.
The eternal is a constant present without beginning or end, without
past or future. What is present to man must suffer these limitations;
in other words, man must be born, must go through an evolution, or what
is the same, become to himself what he has been eternally to God. In
this respect man’s relation to God may be compared to the relation of a
newborn child to its earthly father. To him the nature and scope of the
child is perfectly clear, but the child is unconscious of it and must
awaken to an understanding thereof, that is to say, must become to itself
what it already is to its father.

Living beings form a continuous series in the absolute organism. This
series is such that the higher beings form the conditions and supports
of the lower. This connection must be entirely reversed during evolution
itself, which naturally proceeds from the lower to the higher. In time
therefore the generation and development of the lower beings must precede
that of the higher. We have also seen that the evolution of the former
is identical with the upbuilding of the organisms of the latter, and
we understand now that the whole process _must_ essentially follow the
course which, as we have previously shown, it does in fact, actually take.

It is further the inherent idea of time that man’s eternal entity
cannot appear whole and undivided. He must plot it out along a series
of successive moments which make room for only one cell-generation at a
time. As the cell’s entity again has a less comprehensive content than
man’s, its lifetime must be correspondingly shorter.




CHAPTER XIII.

Recapitulation.


The theory we have here advanced may naturally seem startling; for what
could be more foreign to common conceptions than the assertion that
science today gives us full evidence of a death and a resurrection that
commence during our life in time? Considering this, it may be appropriate
to recapitulate the salient points in our line of thought.

From prehistoric times up to our own days all people at all stages of
evolution have to a man been convinced that the body in some way and in
some form contains an imperishable and essential part which man cannot
do without in a future life. With this intuitive and purely instinctive
faith as a basis, the steps in the following historical evolution become
fully natural and logical consequences.

It is not to be wondered at that this eternal part should at first sight
be considered identical with the material body. Therefore it was also
natural that a cult of the dead would be the stage where all people
begin. Man sees however that death as a matter of fact separates the
immortal soul from that body which the soul cannot dispense with. The
separation cannot be complete because the ties cannot be severed. The
soul then is attached to the body even after death. Consequently it must
be the duty of the surviving to provide the body of the deceased with a
dwelling as good and suitable as possible and also with the provisions
that the body needs.

A man could not, however, find such a condition satisfactory for any
length of time, and the thought of death gnaws and torments him. Shall
the soul never regain possession of the body without which even the
glories of heaven are pale and shadowy? The doctrine of the bodily
resurrection on the day of judgment must be the next great progress in
our philosophy of life.

But unusually gifted persons, bent towards idealism, had already felt
instinctively that it was not the exterior, material covering that was
indispensable to the soul. Man possessed also another, a spiritual body
which the soul could immediately transfer to another life. We gain a
glimpse of the vividness of this intuition in large groups of men, when
we remember that the survivors even sought to annihilate the material
body by the flames of the pyre in order to liberate the deceased from
his earthly ties. The great masses of the population could not rise to
this ideal conception, and we therefore find the two fundamental ideas
prevailing side by side.

Here the two first epochs in man’s history end. They show us the intimate
connection between religious conceptions and man’s understanding of the
exterior world in which he lives and acts. The following stage commences
logically with the great advancement of the natural sciences. Chemistry
partly lifts the veil that hides the innermost nature of matter, and at
the dawn of the new science the old ideas concerning the nature of the
body disappear like the shadows of night at the rising of the sun.

A bodily resurrection on doomsday is impossible because every dead body
sooner or later arises and takes part in the circulation of matter, so
that on the day of judgment it might be found that the same materials had
entered over and over again into the composition of a variety of human
bodies. It is also a fact that man changes his material clothing several
times even during his earthly life. But the belief in the essential value
of the body is too deeply rooted to give away entirely and so we meet it
again in the modern materialism which perhaps may be said to emphasize
the significance of the body even more than the cult of the dead did in
ancient time.

But while materialism claims as its own the consequences of the
revolutionary work of chemistry, biology lays the firm foundation for a
new and higher development of religious conceptions. Biology discovers
and proves the existence of that spiritual body which humanity has
surmised since prehistoric times. It is to this extraordinarily important
fact that we desired to call attention. We have endeavored to draw its
consequences only as regards the cell-generations which successively
rise and die in the human body as in human society. Now when it can be
shown that these dying generations are eternal and imperishable parts
of man’s own nature, the conception of death and resurrection we have
here advanced must be the only possible one. The hitherto common ideas
regarding the translation of man to another world have upon closer study
been found as naïve as they are unnatural, because any such direct
transposition of man’s entity is impossible and unthinkable.

But however simple and scientifically natural the theory here proposed,
it could not have appeared at a much earlier date. It requires not only
the results of modern cytology but also the widening of the idea of
immortality which natural science suggests and overwhelmingly proves. It
presupposes also the law of evolution we have endeavored to make clear,
namely, that beings endowed with common wants and existing in similar
surroundings and conditions cannot develop, except by the upbuilding of
an organism, and thus entering as organic members in an individual of
higher order than themselves. From these premises we might have deduced
our theory of death and resurrection and yet the whole process would
still have seemed mysterious and inexplicable but for the work of our
great predecessor, _Christofer Jacob Boström_, that Plato of the North,
so often misunderstood by his contemporaries, or at least more known on
account of certain possible deficiencies in his system than because of
its imperishable merits.

Idealism and materialism have hitherto stood as two absolutely
incompatible contrasts and the fierce battle that continuously rages,
even in our days, between the two world-conceptions can, according to
common notions, only be brought to an end through the complete defeat
of one of the parties. We have endeavored to show that both these
philosophies have common deficiencies, but that each of them possesses
an essential part of truth. We cannot deny idealism the merit of having
looked far deeper into the nature of things and phenomena. While
admitting this we cannot be blind to the fact that this philosophy
has left at least one fact of nearly overwhelming importance totally
unexplained. If it be true that the soul is the essential part of
man and is that to which alone immortality is granted, how then shall
we account for the fact that the soul’s evolution, properly the one
principal object of man, must stand aside for the body to such an extent
that the body utilizes, if not all yet at least the largest part of man’s
time and energy? To materialism this reply is given, but then again this
philosophy has been unable to answer all those questions which idealism
alone could satisfactorily explain.

Now at last we understand the reason for these contradictions. The
two world-conceptions suffer the same essential deficiency of having
overlooked the fact that the body contains a spiritual organism, of the
same importance to man’s future life as to his present. In the theory
here proposed materialism in a purified form melts into idealism,
which latter thus receives the supplement it hitherto has lacked as a
universal, satisfactory world-explanation. We have barely outlined this
new, organic idealism and have treated it somewhat more extensively
only with reference to death and resurrection. But also on this point
our work, as all human effort, is only piecemeal labor. As soon as we
have advanced one step, other entirely new questions arise. We already
discern boundless expanses of problems in the same direction and shall
here point out one example. The organic changes, characterizing old
age and preceding the so-called natural death, are comparatively well
studied and known. But in spite of this, natural science is unable to
tell us the underlying cause in the inner nature of the organism, and
it is even admitted that we know no reason why the process should not
follow an entirely opposite course. From our point of view man has an
individual content larger than that included in the successive moments of
time, and death should normally enter with the translation of the last
cell-generation. It is true that as civilization advances man’s lifetime
is constantly increasing, so that we may look forward to a time when
most men will die a natural death. But if we meet a premature death, as
is now generally the case, can this, and other disturbing interruptions
in the natural process, afterwards be repaired? Let us hope that this is
possible, but a decisive answer we cannot give. Our conviction is that
God does not interfere to help man either in the transition itself or
in a future life in any other way than he does here in time. Certainly
the clerical orthodoxy has rightly understood the divine guidance
in its teaching of God’s general providence, comprising the whole
creation, His special providence in regard to mankind, and His most
particular providence, limited to the faithful; that is, to those that
let themselves be governed by the divine will. Critical experience has
never discovered any exterior, occasional interference, which moreover
is utterly impossible. God is present and active in the eternal and
unchangeable laws of nature and spirit. Sin and punishment, virtue and
reward, are connected with each other as reason and conclusion, cause
and effect. Man is himself the cause of his acts and they bring their
inevitable consequences. The man therefore who consciously and purposely
distorts his own natural evolution or that of others stands before
himself and before his fellow men burdened with a terrible responsibility.




FOOTNOTES


[1] The latest researches in regard to the newly discovered corpuscles
show that these “bodies” have a mass proportional to the square of their
velocity, thus forcing us to conclude that they at rest have no mass.
Perhaps, therefore, the ancient dualistic world of matter and force
is merging into a larger unity where life directs force to serve its
specific purposes.—Translator’s note.

[2] Chemists understand that the so-called native iron, found, for
instance, in Greenland, forms no real exception more than the chemical
reactions that absorb heat form exceptions to the general law that
chemical processes set heat free, because if the necessary simultaneous
reactions are taken into account, all the reactions as a whole show a
surplus of heat.—Translator’s note.

[3] Björklund might here properly have referred to his previous
demonstration of the fact that life has no roots in time, consequently is
independent of this principle—i. e., immortal.—Translator’s note.




INDEX


    Absolute organism, the, 187.

    Achilles, 14.

    Activity, incitement to, 154.

    Adaptation, 149.

    Affinity, 97.

    Agni, the elementary, 24.

    Annihilation contrary to nature, 1, 168.

    Army organization, 159f.

    Art and organic matter, 107, 111, 119f.

    Ask and Embla, 21.

    Athens, 9.


    Bacteria, 57.

    Belief in future life, 2.

    Biology and the spiritual body, 192.

    Björklund, Johan Gustaf, VII.

    Body, importance of the, 18.

    Boström, Christofer Jacob, 174, 194.

    Burial ceremonies, 9, 20.

    Büchner, 48f, 56, 62, 69, 73, 75, 83.


    Causality, 118, 119.

    Cause, sufficient, 117.

    Cells, living units, 27, 29;
      man, a community of, 30;
      a system of, 142.

    Chemical reactions, 76, 82.

    Chinese civilization, 10;
      death-cultus, 11.

    Chlorophyll, 115.

    Christianity, 16, 20.

    Church burial, 16.

    Circulation, blood, 78.

    Civilization, antiquity of Chinese, 10.

    Cohesion, 97.

    Conscience, 44.

    Consciousness, 45.

    Combustion, 92, 94ff.

    Communism, cell, 159.

    Coöperation, innermost, 161.

    Corporeal existence, soul’s craving for, 15.

    Cosmic catastrophe, a, 103.

    Creation, orthodox theory of, 67, 173.

    Cremation, 21, 24.

    Customs, grave, 13.

    Coulanges, Fustel de, 7, 10.

    Cytology, 28, 29, 177, 193.


    Darwin’s theory, 62.

    Death, and dissolution, 1;
      in mid-ocean, 12.

    Death-cultus, 11, 49, 189, 192.

    Decay, 105, 116.

    Deity, 176.

    Dextrose, 82.

    “Division of labor,” organic, 141.

    Dogma, 16, 51.

    Doomsday, 191.

    Dove, 128.

    Dualism, ecclesiastical, 21, 88.

    Dusch, von, 57.

    Duty of matrimony in China, 12.

    Dying and renewal, process of, 125.


    Earth, history of our, 100.

    Ego, perceived as relation, the, 162f.

    Elysian fields, 15.

    Energy of a living being, the, 72.

    Entity, the soul’s, 164;
      man’s, 169;
      the divine, 185.

    Equivalents of energy, 89.

    Eskimo, the, 13.

    Eternal, the, 181, 185f.

    Eternity, 183.

    Ether, 89.

    Evolution, 17, 26.

    Existence beyond the grave, 37.

    Experience, daily, 77.


    Faith, founded on probability, 37.

    Fear, effect of, 131.

    Fechner, Gustav, V.

    Flourens, 129.

    Folk-lore, IV.

    Food, 156.

    Forces, inorganic, 74;
      as qualities, 76;
      and resistance, 87.

    Forms of energy, 88.

    Foundation fact, Björklund’s, XII.

    Fries, S. A. D. D., VII.

    Fuel, organic, 93.

    Function, bodily, 48.

    Funeral ceremonies, 7.

    Furnace heat and the sun, 109.

    Future life, modern attitude toward, 4.


    Geology, 62, 69.

    Ghosts, 25.

    God, image of, 22;
      presence of, in logical laws, 180.

    Granfelt, 19.

    Grave, communications from the, 7;
      in China, 12.

    Grew, 28.


    Harvey’s formula, 55f, 58, 62ff, 67, 122.

    Heat, equivalents of, 98f.

    Historical process, the, 46, 70, 188f.

    Hierologists, Germanic, 22.

    Hoffman, 58.

    Höner, 22.

    Humanity, a higher organism, 126;
      the link between God and man, 177.

    Hunger, 156.

    Hydrates of carbon, 82.


    Idea, man, God’s eternal, 174.

    Idealism, 18, 194.

    Image of God, the soul an, 172f, 179.

    Immaterial experience, 45, 50.

    Immortality, instinctive, 1, 2;
      of the cell, 124.

    Incentives, 119.

    Indestructibility of matter and energy, 170.

    Indian tribes, 13.

    Industry, a common need of, 145.

    Inertia, 111.

    Instinct, faith and, 4, 6;
      social, 144.

    Intellect, mechanical equivalent of, 90.

    Intelligence and the soul, 132.

    Intuition, 26, 44, 173f.

    Islam, 15.


    Judaism, 15.

    Jungle of materialism, the, XV.


    Key, Ellen, VIII.


    Laboratory results, 83, 84.

    Language, cell, 164.

    Lavoisier, 72.

    Life-force, so-called, 71, 73, 121.

    Life, supernatural origin of, 123.

    Logical laws the form in which God exists, 180.

    Limitations, man’s, 178.

    Lodur, 21.


    Machine, the living, 79, 139.

    Malpighi, 28.

    Man, a social organism of cells, 32;
      responsibility of, 198.

    Material, organic, 112f.

    Materialism, 19, 49, 85.

    Matrimony in China, 11.

    Matter, 47, 68, 88, 96, 118.

    Mechanical toy, man not a, XIV.

    Mechanism of the organism, 138.

    Memory, 146.

    Metamorphosis, 40.

    Micro-organic world, the, 58.

    Mid-ocean, death in, 12.

    Microscope, the, 28, 155.

    Mirbel, Brisseau de, 29.

    Mind, time-bound and space-bound, XIV.

    Moldenhaver, 29.

    Molecules, 96.

    “Moss-clad fragment,” the, 65.

    Motility, mechanical, 79.

    Mutability, 91.

    Mythology, Germanic, 21.


    Nations as organisms, 31.

    Natural science, 48, 191.

    Nirvana, XIV.

    Nobel prize, the, X.

    Negroes, immortality ideas among, 12.

    Nordenskold, 13.

    Norse sagas, 15.


    Odin, 22.

    _Omne vivum ex vivo_, 59.

    Organic structure, 33, 83, 84.

    Origin of life, the, 70.

    Oxygen, 102.


    Pacific Ocean, 10.

    Parasites, 54.

    Parseeism, 15.

    Pasteur, 58.

    Permanence, law of, 89, 91.

    Personal existence after death, 6.

    Philosophy of science, the, 73.

    Polar regions, 10.

    Pre-existence, 171.

    Prehistoric beliefs, 4, 188.

    Present, the eternally, 182.

    Presentiment, 2.

    Priestley, 72.

    Primitive ideas of immortality, 10.

    Principles of life and physical force, 90, 91, 121.

    Propagation, 54, 55, 61.

    Providence, 133, 197.

    Psychical Research, society for, III.

    Psychologic order of evolution, 5.

    Purpose, organic, 149.

    Pyre, the funeral, 190.


    Reasoning, headlong, 20.

    Re-birth, 40.

    Recapitulation, 188.

    Religious instincts, 17.

    Resurrection, 15f, 150, 166, 190.

    Rydberg, Victor, 21, 172.


    Sagas, 15.

    Samoyede grave, a, 13.

    Scheele, 72.

    Schröder, 57.

    Schultze, 57.

    Schwann, 57.

    Science and resurrection, 16, 20, 74.

    Scylla and Charybdis of science, the, XIV.

    Sin, 198.

    Skeptical attitude, modern, 3f.

    Society, human, 32, 143, 158.

    Solar system, the, 184.

    Sorcerers, 25.

    Soul, future life of the, 8, 14;
      physiologists and the, 127;
      functions of the, 130, 134;
      a spiritual principle, 151.

    Spallanzani, 57.

    Spiritual body, a, 19f, 22, 26, 34f, 190, 195;
      vision, 43;
      interaction, 152;
      beings, 175.

    Spontaneous generation, 51, 52, 59, 105, 122.

    Substance, living, 124;
      comprehending, 153.

    Sun, importance of the, 104.

    Supernatural forces, 45, 67.

    Steam engine, art and the, 108, 110.

    Swedish Peace Society, X.


    Teleological causality, 118.

    Telepathy, III.

    Thomson, Sir William, 63.

    Time, a form of existence, 181.

    Tissues, the, 142.

    Tomb, life in the, 7.

    Tool, the organism a, 135.

    Transcendental world, a, 42.

    Treviranus, 29.


    Units, organic, 151.

    Unity of the organism, 166f.

    Upsala, VII.


    Veda Aryans, 21, 23f.

    Virtue, 198.

    _Vis inertia_, 110f.

    Vitalistic doctrine, 72.


    Will incentive, 119.

    Wöhler, 81.