Evolution and revelation / by J.A. Fleming.

  • John Ambrose Fleming
Date:
[between 1900 and 1999]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution and revelation / by J.A. Fleming. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    If a cell of living protoplasm has an electric shock administered to it, or is exposed to too high a temperature, it becomes “ dead,” that is, loses its above-named specific qualities. No one at present knows exactly what change then takes place in it when it passes from the living to the dead state. Furthermore, the most elaborate researches have not shown us how we can produce living protoplasm from non-living or dead matter. The most assured result is that every living organism has been produced only by a previously living organism. All attempts to prove or produce spontaneous generation have failed. Rigorous research epitomizes itself in the maxim Omne vivum ez vivo. Hence the production of living matter involved a ‘‘ beginning ” of some kind, in that it was not the result of mere physical and chemical actions. To say that if we went far enough back in time we might find the conditions under which organic but non-living matter passed into living matter, 1s pure speculation and hypothesis; the verdict of scientific research at present is that it is not possible for us to do it now, and that it does not happen spontaneously at present. Therefore, the Life in the Universe, like the Energy, involved a beginning and a Causative Agent. But there is a third manifestation in the Universe which indicates strongly the action not merely of a Causative Agent but of a Supreme Intelligence, and that is the Order presented in it. The free interaction of merely physical forces produces only the greatest possible disorder. In a volume of gas such as our atmosphere, the free collisions of molecules cause the motions of all of them to be distributed in every possible direction and with every possible speed—some fast, some slow. If at any time we could find gas atoms in an enclosed vessel moving all with equal speed in the same direction, we should consider it called for careful examination as to the reason of it. The pebbles on a beach rubbing together and dashed by the waves are of all possible shapes and sizes and arranged in the greatest possible disorder. If we were to find them arranged in regular heaps all of the same size and increasing by regular increments from heap to heap, nothing would persuade the most ignorant person that this orderly arrangement was the result of chance. The trees in a forest or jungle present the greatest disorder in size, species and position. If we find some long avenue of trees of all the same kind arranged at regular intervals, the
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