An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars by Henri de Parville

Author:Henri de Parville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2011-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

LETTER XI

How we come to life. Vital release. Means of measuring it. Why the vegetable that grows in the dark weighs less than the seed that produced it. The maximum of life. Duration of existence. Mr. Ziegler disagrees with M. Flourens. Human longevity. Why do vegetables awaken in spring? Does man create his likeness? Machines for manufacturing creatures. The transmission of organic force. The Creator.

Mr. Ziegler: “Several members of the commission wanted to raise objections to what I said yesterday, on Sunday; I fear that the physiologists have not entirely grasped my meaning, and I ask, gentleman, to say something further about the origin of life. Others have only seen my explanation as a materialist thesis without consequences; I feel compelled to enlighten the former and reassure the latter.

“I repeat at this point the fundamental principle already cited: every molecular aggregation tends to engender a similar molecular aggregation.

“The germ, gentlemen, is a definite and elaborate molecular aggregation produced by organic forces in function. Take a germ, a seed or an egg: if you do not put this one or that one in the required physical conditions, you will get nothing from it, absolutely nothing from one or the other. But plant the seed in a suitable environment, of a sort in which it can find around it similar molecules to adjoin to itself, and you will soon see vital activity develop and the seed transform itself into a plant.

“Was the seed or the embryo, then, before its excitation by external forces, a raw, inert, inorganic entity? No, gentlemen; it was an aggregation of organic molecules not in possession of the quantity of motion required to adjoin similar molecules to itself. It was an incomplete creation, only awaiting an excess of force to transform itself. I have said that two conditions must be fulfilled before the seed can produce the plant: sufficient external forces, and the required elements of aggregation. Here, gentlemen, is an immediate verification.

“Let us suppress, only partially, the external forces; let us, for example, place the seed in total darkness, and let us keep the elements of aggregation. Life, we have said, is the release of a stored force. Now, let us release the force stored in the seed; as we have suppressed the major part of the excitatory force, evidently the life will be very short; new molecules cannot be grouped around the old; when the quantity of motion stored is exhausted, the organism will die.

“Now consider this: here is a seed; we have placed it in the Sun; it has germinated; then we have shut it up in a dark room. Solar excitation has given it life; the suppression of that force does not take it away. It is necessary to wait for the stored force to be exhausted; the plant will therefore continue to live, and the larger its embryo was, the longer it will live. Eventually, we shall see it wither, and then die. The plant will have exhausted all the force stored in its embryo.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.