The seminal corpuscle penetrating into the yolk-membrane with the point of its head, and there probably exchanging by endosmosis its substance with the yolk, does, therefore, nothing else in the first instance but give to the yolk-mass a powerful impulse towards entering upon the furrowing process,—an impulse which is indispensable under favourable circumstances for ova, under all circumstances for germ-cells. The transmission of qualities also on the father’s side, on the other hand, proves that the union of procreative materials with the higher development of sexual generation certainly acquires a still profounder significance, in that through the mingling of the matter of generation there is produced a real blending of the parental qualities. The copulation of certain zoospores naturally occurs to the mind as prototype of this process, in which nothing but the united force of two cells appears to be decisive as long as no difference of the combining elements is to be made out, either in their own nature or in their origin.
According to the foregoing, we can see nothing further in the formation of new organisms through a female animal, whether with or without the aid of a male organism, than an organic formation, which is distinguished from other organic formation, e.g., the fresh development of certain previously non-existent organs at certain periods of life, not in the essence of the process, but only by the end which the newly formed object subserves, in that this end lies in all other organic formation (with the exception of the lacteal secretion in mammals) within, and only in generation without, the forming individual. If, now, the new formation, no matter from what beginnings, has attained a degree which renders it capable of existence as an independent organism, there follows the liberation from the maternal organism, an act to which we can hardly be inclined to ascribe any psychical importance, which goes beyond the reflectorial-instinctive accommodation to the changed life-conditions (e.g., in mammals, occurrence of respiration).
Thus it is also empirically confirmed that the organism of the embryo, of the fœtus, and of the child, just as much as any other part of a finished organism, has at every stage and every moment of its life precisely as much soul as it needs for its own bodily preservation and continued development, and as its organs of consciousness are able to grasp. That, however, the Unconscious lays hold of life wherever it can, and that in this respect, too, quite apart from its connection with the maternal organism, the animation of the new germ relatively to its capability of animation is only the special case of a universal natural phenomenon, will become still more evident from a few examples.
In Autenrieth’s “Views of the Life of Nature and of the Soul,” we find on pp. 265–266 the following notes: “Thus also Lister (Kirby and Spence, ‘Introduction to Entomology’), Bonnet and Stickney, saw caterpillars and pupæ of butterflies, and larvæ of the Tipula oleracea freeze into lumps of ice, and on being thawed revive.—According to the more exact observations of Spallanzani (“Opuscoli di Fisica Animale e Vegetabile,” Modena, vol. ii. p. 236), the tiny rotifers, Furcularia rediviva Lamarck, which are found in boggy water and in the sand from gutters, if they are not exposed to the open air, but covered in a little sand-heap, and left to dry along with it, after the lapse of three or even four years (during which time the dried sand has been preserved in a glass or a chip-box), sometimes revive as soon as the dry sand is moistened afresh with water, except that the longer they are kept in the dried state, the smaller is the number which again become living and perform all the ordinary life-functions. They revived, however, although by the process of drying they had become so indurated (and they usually possess merely a gelatinous body), that, if one pricked them with the point of a needle, the body burst like a particle of salt into several pieces. Thus these animalcules may be alternately dried and rendered lifeless eleven times, and yet when mollified in water again return to life. They also do not lose their capability of becoming reanimated if they freeze along with the water, and then are exposed even to a cold of 19° R. below freezing-point; just as in their dried-up state they may be exposed even to 54° above freezing-point without losing the capability of reviving by the aid of water, whilst, if they are in the living condition, they perish utterly in warm water of even 26°.”
Ibid., p. 20:—“John Franklin (‘First Voyage to the Shores of the Polar Sea’), in the winter of 1820–1821, on his first voyage to the North American coasts of the Arctic Ocean, saw fishes freeze immediately on emerging from the water, and become so solid an icy mass that they could be cloven by the axe into pieces—even their viscera presenting a mere solid frozen lump. Nevertheless, some of these fishes when warmed at the fire, without previous injury, recovered their vitality. A carp, notwithstanding that it had been for six-and-thirty hours completely frozen, recovered so completely that it was able to throw itself about with considerable energy.”
When Ellis (“Voyage to Hudson’s Bay”) was wintering on the River Nelson at Hudson’s Bay, a perfectly frozen lump of black autumn-flies was found; on being brought near the fire they revived. He reported that frogs are often found there on the shores of the lakes as firmly frozen as the ice itself, which yet, thawed by a moderate temperature, recovered to such a degree that they crept from one place to another.
Thoroughly frozen trees, too, can, after being slowly thawed, revive and put forth fresh leaves.1
Hunter found, however, from his experiments, that when a fish perished rather slowly in the intense cold, and then was frozen, it became incapable of being recalled to life by thawing, on which account the attempt is unsuccessful to freeze an entirely warm-blooded animal and to try to revive it by thawing; and we must renounce the hope of ever again beholding in life, even under favourable circumstances, say an elephant or rhinoceros of the primeval world, preserved quite whole in the polar ice, as one has found toads in rocks in which they must have been enclosed for centuries, perhaps thousands of years, and which when liberated hopped about quite briskly.
When modern authorities declare the reanimation of frozen warm-blooded animals to be impossible on account of a decomposition of the blood induced by the frost, they are met by the most recent investigations of Schenk, according to which a temperature of − 3°, sometimes even a briefer refrigeration to − 7°, is borne quite well by blood corpuscles, salivary corpuscles, spermatozoa, and even by fertilised ova, notwithstanding their more advanced state of life, motion, and development. (Pox lymph, even after prolonged cooling to − 78°, loses none of its force.) If the proceedings 011 the questions appertaining to this subject are not yet closed, yet the instances quoted are in general sufficient to render plausible the a priori belief that every trace of life can disappear from an organism, and that notwithstanding the ability to begin a new life-career, under favourable circumstances, can remain intact, if only none of those changes have taken place in the same which render anatomically or physiologically impossible the resumption of the life-functions after the restoration of the normal circumstances. For this it is necessary that both during the lifeless condition (induced by dying or freezing, or by hermetically sealing), as well as in the passage from the normally vital to the lifeless condition (e.g., through the rapidity of the freezing), a chemical or histological change detrimental to future vital activity be prevented. On the other hand, such changes are indifferent as regards resuscitation which only destroy the normal character of the future vital functions, and cause the organism to awake to a merely pathological life, which is, however, soon again extinguished of itself.
In Rotifers one might assume that the drying up never goes so far as to allow of any interchange of matter, so that, strictly speaking, one would not have to do with an absolute stoppage of the vital functions, but with their reduction to a minimum (as in winter sleep). But even this assumption fails when it is a question of frozen bodies, as hard as stone, in the winter cold of the polar regions, or of toads which have been enclosed in rocks for centuries, or even still longer. For the latter, a minimum of exchange of matter, which one may conceive to be brought about by the water percolating the roc
k, must have sufficed in the enormous stretch of time for the animal’s consumption. In the case of frozen organisms, however only a slight superficial evaporation can have taken place. Vital function, however, is rendered impossible both by the absence of the most general physical conditions of the organic change of matter, endosmosis, as also by the indispensableness of a fluid state for every chemical reaction.
Now, if it be granted that in the utterly frozen body every organic function, i.e., all vital activity, is impossible, the body is deprived of every trace of life, i.e., it is absolutely lifeless; its condition is then specifically and totally different from all states of depressed vital function, like sleep, hibernation, swoon, tetanus, apparent death; the body in this condition bears the same relation to life as an inorganic body.
It is of course intrinsically unimportant whether one applies the epithet dead to the body, for that concerns only the definition of the notion dead. If one absolutely identifies lifeless and dead, as is natural, one will do so; if one, however, makes a distinction between the two conceptions, and calls only that lifeless object which cannot become again living dead, one will not do so. The latter view could, however, result only from the prejudice that what is dead cannot again become alive,—a proposition, of course, not to be proved a priori, but only to be induced from experience, and which for a long time might pass for true. But now, when facts come to light showing that something dead can under certain circumstances become alive again, one should rather recognise the exception to the induction hitherto assumed as a universally valid axiom, than arbitrarily restrict the conception “dead” for the sake of the old prejudice. This remark would certainly be idle, if that prejudiced limitation of the concept dead did not also entail the further prejudice, that the absolutely lifeless need not also be void of soul, which one would rather have thought self-evident; for the soul of a body is indeed only the sum of the functions or activities of the Unconscious referring to it, which for the sake of brevity are called its vital functions.
From the circumstance that an organism, so long as it is frozen, possesses neither life nor soul, it follows that if after a certain time life and soul return to it, this soul can no longer be regarded as one and the same with that inherent in it before the passing into the frozen state, since for the sameness of two temporally divided souls the temporal continuity of the activities of the former with the activities of the latter is requisite; but by no means can the sameness of the organism in question and the similar nature of the souls depending upon it be deemed sufficient. If, to speak with the vulgar, on the cessation of life the old soul has gone away, with the reappearance of life another soul might just as well as the former one have taken up its abode in the organism. The absurdity of this way of regarding the subject is, however, immediately evident, if one reflects that the Unconscious is all in all, and remembers that old and new soul are activities of the same essence of the All-One directed to the same organism that sends life again immediately into the organisms, so far as is possible, according to the laws of matter.
One sees from these examples that it makes no difference to Nature whether, as ordinarily, the vital organisms enjoy a continuity of their vital functions, or whether a body hitherto incapable of life becomes at this moment vital; as the possibility of life is given, the Unconscious animates it, in that it directs upon it the psychical functions adapted to its constitution. If we then assume the case, that the germ of a young organism, which we commonly have seen arise as an integral element in the life-course of the maternal organism, that such a germ, liberated from all dependence on an already existing life, suddenly begins to be, it must just as infallibly as the thawed fish or the mollified rotifer in the first moment of its organic capacity for life be animated by the Unconscious, and such a phenomenon should now no longer be regarded as an isolated exception.
To this view I refer any one who should assert that the unfertilised ovum is not yet animated, and only receives its soul at the moment of fertilisation, which, indeed, in lower animals, for the most part, takes place outside the maternal organism; although this conception not only runs counter to our view of the animation of every cell, but also fails to explain the evolution of the germ-cell without fertilisation. But at any rate our doctrine finds a sufficient application in the instance of spontaneous generation, or the arising of organic beings from inorganic matter without a maternal organism. Such an original generation must have taken place, for geology shows that the earth has gradually cooled down from a molten mass to our present temperature; but now, as no organisms can exist at a temperature higher than that required for the coagulation of albumen, the earth must, for the longest part of its existence, have been uninhabited; and as it is now actually peopled by organisms, there must of necessity have been a point of time when the first being or beings came into existence,1 whereas before this time there only existed inorganic matter. Here the conception of spontaneous generation is satisfied.
I do not say that at that point of time no organic, but only that no organised matter was in existence; on the contrary, I believe we must assume that, under the influence of a humid atmosphere, very rich in carbonic acid, of greater heat, of light, and strong electrical influences, even by the inorganic path highly complex combinations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen were formed, which the chemists of to-day, on account of their especial occurrence in organic beings, have designated by the improper name of organic substances.
Very recent chemical investigations have succeeded in refuting the earlier assumption, that organic substances could not be obtained by an inorganic path, by facts so striking, that it now only seems a question of time when man shall obtain complete mastery over the province of organic chemistry likewise. Synthetic chemistry is already in the organic department on a level with analytic chemistry. A number of the most talented investigators (e.g., Berthelot) devote their energies to it, and well-nigh every month it has new and striking triumphs to report. The problem of producing the acids, aldehydes, and alcohols belonging to the so-called fat series from inorganic elements is to be regarded as solved in principle, and the discoveries in the so-called aromatic series (to which most liquid combustibles, organic colouring matters, essences, and perfumes belong) take place with such rapidity and with such certainty, that we now hardly need to ascertain more than the organic-chemical constitution of such bodies in order to be sure of their synthesis in advance. But the keen eye of the chemist gazes still farther; the resinous and saccharine substances are beginning to reveal their true nature, and to awaken unbounded hopes for the future of organic synthesis.
If thus the boundary-line between inorganic and organic matter has long fallen away, that between inorganic and organic form begins more and more to waver. Undoubtedly the compound organic types exhibit forms for which (with the exception of the radiated type) no analogy is found in inorganic nature; but we must not forget that life dwells also even in the great kingdom of unicellular organisms, and the cell finds, in fact, its analogue in inorganic nature. In the first place, most fluids possess at their surface a considerably greater density and tenacity than in their interior, a difference which appears nowhere more plainly than in albumen and its solutions. If in every drop an analogy here presents itself with the often infinitely delicate cellular membrane, the resemblance becomes a surprising morphological identity with starch-granules in the microscopic corpuscles of carbonate of lime, which Famintzin precipitated by bringing together saturated solutions of chloride of calcium and carbonate of lime. Here is exhibited the same nucleus, the same stratification, the same concrescence of several granules, the same augmented capacity of resistance of the internal layer to acetic acid as in the starch granules. It follows from this, in the first place, that starch granules are not living cells, but lifeless secretions of other living elements, a magazine of material destined for future reconsumption. But it also follows that the cell-form, with nucleus and membrane, of itself proves nothing at all with respect to the existence o
f organic life, not even when it has organic matter for its contents, but that for life something quite other is required than organic matter and organic form, something ideal, which manifests itself in the preservation and elaboration of the form by the interchange of matter, whilst every conservation of the form by passive conservation of the matter is related to life as a mummy, which at the most deludes the naked eye with the semblance of life.
I said, therefore, it is probable that before the coming into existence of the simplest organisms, so-called organic combinations of a lower stage were already in existence, which rendered the building up of an organism from them essentially easier, as water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, by which complete organisms are nourished. For the formation of the primitive germ these organic substances would then have, at least, played the part of manure, which now arises from the process of decomposition of organisms. The probability that these first organisms lived in water is generally recognised; that they must have been very simple beings, simple cells standing at the indifference-point between plant and animal, has been already shown in Sect. 0. Chap. iv. Now, however the process itself may be conceived in detail, this must be firmly held, that the Unconscious apprehended and realised the first possibility of organic life that occurred. When previously, in discussing sexual generation, we conceived the “moment” of the animation of the germ, as if the Unconscious approaches a formed germ in order to animate it, this was only admissible because, in harmony with the traditional mode of apprehension, we tacitly supposed the unconscious-psychical activities requisite for the formation of the germ to proceed from the parental organisms; but now, as such a distinction has no place from the point of view of the All and Only Unconscious, we must call to mind that the animation of the germ does not follow, but precedes the origin of the germ, i.e., that the germ can only come into existence by the Unconscious causing a special activity to effect its origination, which predestines its typical form in accordance with the possibilities given by the existing conditions, precisely as in the plastic energy of the vis medicatrix the typical form of the leg growing again on the salamander is predestined by the activity of the Unconscious. Here, as there, no inorganic laws of Nature are contradicted, none assumed to be inactive even for a moment, but they are only employed for a higher purpose; something is formed which could not have come to pass solely by the co-operation of the laws of inorganic Nature, and which only becomes possible through the will of the Unconscious stepping in and inducing a state of affairs in which now, by the normal action of the inorganic laws of Nature, a new form capable of new performances is fashioned.
Philosophy of the Unconscious Page 70