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_.