The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2). Spencer Herbert

in the sea; and it has the simpler environment. Marine creatures are affected by fewer co-existences and sequences than terrestrial ones. Being very nearly of the same specific gravity as the surrounding medium, they have to contend with less various mechanical actions. The sea-anemone fixed to a stone, and the acalephe borne along in the current, need to undergo no internal changes such as those by which the caterpillar meets the varying effects of gravitation, while creeping over and under the leaves. Again, the sea is liable to none of those extreme and rapid alterations of temperature which the air suffers. Night and day produce no appreciable modifications in it; and it is comparatively little affected by the seasons. Thus its contained fauna show no marked correspondences similar to those by which air-breathing creatures counterbalance thermal changes. Further, in respect to the supply of nutriment, the conditions are more simple. The lower tribes of animals inhabiting the water, like the plants inhabiting the air, have their food brought to them. The same current which brings oxygen to the oyster, also brings it the microscopic organisms on which it lives: the disintegrating matter and the matter to be integrated, co-exist under the simplest relation. It is otherwise with land animals. The oxygen is everywhere, but the sustenance is not everywhere: it has to be sought; and the conditions under which it is to be obtained are more or less complex. So too with that liquid by the agency of which the vital processes are carried on. To marine creatures water is ever present, and by the lowest is passively absorbed; but to most creatures living on the earth and in the air, it is made available only through those nervous changes constituting perception, and those muscular ones by which drinking is effected. Similarly, after tracing upwards from the Amphibia the widening extent and complexity which the environment, as practically considered, assumes – after observing further how increasing heterogeneity in the flora and fauna of the globe, itself progressively complicates the environment of each species of organism – it might finally be shown that the same general truth is displayed in the history of mankind, who, in the course of their progress, have been adding to their physical environment a social environment that has been growing ever more involved. Thus, speaking generally, it is clear that those relations in the environment to which relations in the organism must correspond, themselves increase in number and intricacy as the life assumes a higher form.

      § 34. To make yet more manifest the fact that the degree of life varies as the degree of correspondence, let me here point out, that those other distinctions successively noted when contrasting vital changes with non-vital changes, are all implied in this last distinction – their correspondence with external co-existences and sequences; and further, that the increasing fulfilment of those other distinctions which we found to accompany increasing life, is involved in the increasing fulfilment of this last distinction. We saw that living organisms are characterized by successive changes, and that as the life becomes higher, the successive changes become more numerous. Well, the environment is full of successive changes, and the greater the correspondence, the greater must be the number of successive changes in the organism. We saw that life presents simultaneous changes, and that the more elevated it is, the more marked the multiplicity of them. Well, besides countless co-existences in the environment, there are often many changes occurring in it at the same moment; and hence increased correspondence with it implies in the organism an increased display of simultaneous changes. Similarly with the heterogeneity of the changes. In the environment the relations are very varied in their kinds, and hence, as the organic actions come more and more into correspondence with them, they too must become very varied in their kinds. So again is it even with definiteness of combination. As the most important surrounding changes with which each animal has to deal, are the definitely-combined changes exhibited by other animals, whether prey or enemies, it results that definiteness of combination must be a general characteristic of the internal ones which have to correspond with them. So that throughout, the correspondence of the internal relations with the external ones is the essential thing; and all the special characteristics of the internal relations, are but the collateral results of this correspondence.

      §§ 35, 36. Before closing the chapter, it will be useful to compare the definition of Life here set forth, with the definition of Evolution set forth in First Principles. Living bodies being bodies which display in the highest degree the structural changes constituting Evolution; and Life being made up of the functional changes accompanying these structural changes; we ought to find a certain harmony between the definitions of Evolution and of Life. Such a harmony is not wanting.

      The first distinction we noted between the kind of change shown in Life, and other kinds of change, was its serial character. We saw that vital change is substantially unlike non-vital change, in being made up of successive changes. Now since organic bodies display so much more than inorganic bodies those continuous differentiations and integrations which constitute Evolution; and since the re-distributions of matter thus carried so far in a comparatively short period, imply concomitant re-distributions of motion; it is clear that in a given time, organic bodies must undergo changes so comparatively numerous as to render the successiveness of their changes a marked characteristic. And it will follow a priori, as we found it to do a posteriori, that the organisms exhibiting Evolution in the highest degree, exhibit the longest or the most rapid successions of changes, or both. Again, it was shown that vital change is distinguished from non-vital change by being made up of many simultaneous changes; and also that creatures possessing high vitality are marked off from those possessing low vitality, by the far greater number of their simultaneous changes. Here, too, there is entire congruity. In First Principles, § 156, we reached the conclusion that a force falling on any aggregate is divided into several forces; that when the aggregate consists of parts that are unlike, each part becomes a centre of unlike differentiations of the incident force; and that thus the multiplicity of such differentiations must increase with the multiplicity of the unlike parts. Consequently organic aggregates, which as a class are distinguished from inorganic aggregates by the greater number of their unlike parts, must be also distinguished from them by the greater number of simultaneous changes they display; and, further, that the higher organic aggregates, having more numerous unlike parts than the lower, must undergo more numerous simultaneous changes. We next found that the changes occurring in living bodies are contrasted with those occurring in other bodies, as being much more heterogeneous; and that the changes occurring in the superior living bodies are similarly contrasted with those occurring in inferior ones. Well, heterogeneity of function is the correlate of heterogeneity of structure; and heterogeneity of structure is the leading distinction between organic and inorganic aggregates, as well as between the more highly organized and the more lowly organized. By reaction, an incident force must be rendered multiform in proportion to the multiformity of the aggregate on which it falls; and hence those most multi-form aggregates which display in the highest degree the phenomena of Evolution structurally considered, must also display in the highest degree the multiform actions which constitute Evolution functionally considered. These heterogeneous changes, exhibited simultaneously and in succession by a living organism, prove, on further inquiry, to be distinguished by their combination from certain non-vital changes which simulate them. Here, too, the parallelism is maintained. It was shown in First Principles, Chap. XIV, that an essential characteristic of Evolution is the integration of parts, which accompanies their differentiation – an integration shown both in the consolidation of each part, and in the union of all the parts into a whole. Hence, animate bodies having greater co-ordination of parts than inanimate ones must exhibit greater co-ordination of changes; and this greater co-ordination of their changes must not only distinguish organic from inorganic aggregates, but must, for the same reason, distinguish higher organisms from lower ones, as we found that it did. Once more, it was pointed out that the changes constituting Life differ from other changes in the definiteness of their combination, and that a distinction like in kind though less in degree, holds between the vital changes of superior creatures and those of inferior creatures. These, also, are contrasts in harmony with the contrasts disclosed by the analysis of Evolution. We saw (First Principles, §§ 129-137) that during Evolution there is an increase of definiteness as well as an increase of heterogeneity. We saw that the integration accompanying differentiation has necessarily the effect of increasing the distinctness with which the parts are marked off from each other, and that so, out of the incoherent and indefinite there arises the coherent and definite. But a coherent whole made up of definite parts definitely combined, must exhibit more definitely combined changes than a whole made up