CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 9

CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 9

The Seed of Plant and Animal


(R) Well, what have you to say to the contrivance that concentrates in a seed the power from which the future plant or animal will spring?

(J) It is very wonderful.

(R) Can you account for it apart from the operation of intelligence?

(J) My difficulty would be to account for it on any principal.

(R) It would not be so difficult to understand on the assumption of creative intelligence, would it?

(J) I don’t know about that.

(R) If there were no intelligence, there would be no accounting for it at all, would there?

(J) Of course, I grant that the supposition of creative intelligence would simplify the problem, but I find it exceedingly difficult to apply the idea of an extraneous operative intelligence to such a work, with the conception we have formed of intelligence. We have derived that conception of intelligence from our own experiences as human beings, which is necessarily a totally different thing from the kind of operations we are invited to recognize in nature. Man is ignorant of everything apart from experience; in a sense he is outside of everything. His constructive or inventive achievements are the result of experimenting upon the things and conditions around him, and of his need for the things he constructs. It is not possible to apply such an idea to the operations of the power of the universe. He needs not, like man, to make and adapt to get over a difficulty. Therefore, I cannot reason from one to the other.

(R) Well, no, you cannot. No man can. I am not asking you to do so. Your remark draws reasonable distinctions; but if you think it out thoroughly enough, you will find that it relates to modes of operation, and not to the fact of operation. It is upon the fact of operation that I wish to fix your attention. I grant there is no parallel between the works of man and the works of God; but there are two classes of works, are there not?

(J) That is the question.

(R) There are works of man?

(J) Yes there are works of man.

(R) And there are works not of man?

(J) Are you right in calling them works?
(R) Call them what you like: they are facts, operations, things done.

(J) I wish to fence off assumption.

(R) Well, it is not an assumption that the seed of plant and animal contains the potentiality (as scientists say) of the future plant and animal. Consider what a complexity of concentrated power this almost always means. Consider the light and airy fabric of a bird for example, its bones light and hollow for easy carriage in the atmosphere; its wing feathers formed with mathematical exactness, of various sizes and curves, to give the right blows on the air for flying, and having just the right muscles to supply the needed action. Think of all this, automatically organized or built up in an egg, which to the human eye presents nothing but a mass of albumen. Here is a work a thing done. It is not done by man. It is not done by itself. Each nature comes from its own seed only. You never find sea-gulls come from the eggs of the sparrow, or any creature come without derivation. If the works were self done, everything would spring up everywhere. No seed would be necessary for anything; whereas you know the seed or propagation in some other way is essential. If the individuals and the seed of any species perish, the species becomes extinct. Consequently, I am justified in asking you to admit that the implantation of seed power must have been an operation performed in the beginning.

(J) What beginning?

(R)The beginning of the creatures.

(J) If they had a beginning!

(R) Ho ho! You are not going to say the creatures are eternal are you?

(J) Well, no.

(R) You recognize the doctrine of science, I presume; that there was a time in the history of the earth when there was no living creature upon it?

(J) Yes, but that is inconceivable ages back.

(R) It matters not how far back. When you get there, there were no creatures, and then you had the beginning I spoke of the introduction of creatures, with this wonderful capacity, bearing the stamp of supreme wisdom, and requiring the utmost power to perform.

(J) The whole process of reproduction is so automatic, as you expressed it, that I cannot clearly deduce your conclusion from it.

(R) My friend, was the start automatic?

(J) I am not clear about the start.

(R) There must have been a start. There must have been a first animal, a first fish, a first blade of grass. You would not say there was such a departure from Nature then that they came into being spontaneously.

(J) That would be a greater miracle than creation.

(R) If not spontaneously, it must have been from an Operative Cause, and as that operative cause could not have been a powerless animal, fish, or blade of grass, we are bound to ask what it was, and to demand that it was equal to the production of such wonderful organisms.

(J) Organisms without intelligence produce them now: why not assume they were produced in some such way then?

(R) Because the way is barred. There were none such to produce them. That is the argument. The power of unintelligent organisms to produce them now is only part of the mechanism which it required Wisdom and Power to set a-going in the first case.
You have heard of Edison’s phonograph. A man speaks into this instrument, and his voice causes indentations, which, when afterwards passed over a vibrator, give back the sounds that produced them in the first instance, and therefore speak back the words spoken, even after the original speaker may be long dead. Now, suppose the words spoken back by the phonograph were distinct enough to make the needful indentations on another instrument, and that again on another, you would have an instrument that could be mechanically multiplied with speaking power. What would you say to the man who, in after generations, should say that because a phonograph of Mr. Gladstone’s speech could multiply phonograph ad lib. Therefore it was not necessary that there should have been an original speech of Mr. Gladstone’s to start the thing? This is virtually the position of those who say that, because they see the most exquisite contrivances of intelligence propagated from age to age on mechanical principles, therefore no intelligence was needed to start the process in the beginning.

(J) There is some force in your illustration. I will consider it. I am anxious to believe, and shall only be too glad if you can make my judgment captive.