FREE ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. * Tan views set forth
in this treatise were first presented inciden- tally in a series of papers on " the Pathology of Inflammation and Fever," which Dr. Freke published in the _Dublin Medical Press during the years 18.51, 1852, and 1853. Being but re- motely connected with the main subject of the papers, and coming before readers who, for the most part, took extremely little in- terest in any speculations of the kind, they failed to attract much attention. In fact, they were published out of place, and before their time, but now it appears to the author that their time is come. The interest created by Mr. Darwin's work on the Origin of. Species, has prompted Dr. Freke to reproduce his own views on the same subject in a distinct form; the more so because he recognizes a coincidence between Mr. Darwin and himself upon • On the Origin of Species by means of Organic Affinity. By II. Freke, &c. Published by Longman and Co. one grand point—and he regrets that it should be only upon one —the belief, namely, "that all organic creation has originated
from a single primordial germ." Now, if the two inquirers have indeed arrived at the same result by totally different methods— by analogy on the one side, and by induction on the other—this fact will go far towards confirming the truth of their common conclusion ; but has this really happened ? We think not. It appears to us that the agreement between their respective conclu- sions is but superficial, whilst the differences are profound. Mr. Darwin holds that all plants and animals are collectively de- scended from four or five progenitors, possibly from one only, and
that the specific differences between them have been established by the slow accumulation of successive small variations from the primitive type. Dr. Freke's hypothesis is that all terrestrial life began with a sort of organic microcosm, "a microscopic granule," which contained potentially the embryonic germ of every species of plant and animal, and secreted the same in the process of its development. Between these two doctrines, there appears to us to be quite as little concord, and quite as strong an opposition, as between the two old theories, which agreed in ascribing the phenomena of geology to one principal agency, but differed so widely as to the nature of that agency, that the one declared it to be watery, the other fiery.
Whatever be the ultimate fate of Dr. Freke's hypothesis, and of the novel theory of cell development on which he has based it, we doubt not that science will be a gainer by his ingenious specu- lations. He regards organic matter as universally divisible into two classes, one of which has, and the other has not, the power of imparting organization. Cell germs are an example of the first class, to the constituents of which he gives the name of organizing agents; woody fibre, muscular fibre, nervous tissue, cerebral matter, &c., are examples of the second class ; and these he calls organized residual products, because they are produced out of the matter operated on by the organizing agents, and out of that re- sidual portion of it which is not expended by them in reproducing their own type. Now, there are not very many distinct species of these residual products—these organized, but non-organizing, structures—nor do the distinctions between the various species of living beings depend upon any specific difference in the organic constituents of the individuals comprised in them respectively, but upon differences in the number and arrangement of those consti- tuents. Man, for instance, is composed Anatomically of bone, muscle, nerve, and other tissues ; and so are the lion, the horse, the dog, the mouse, &c. There is a repetition in each of the very same species of organized tissues, only differing as to their number and their arrangement. The same fact is observed in the vege- table kingdom ; it is universal, and hence Dr. Freke concludes that the origin of these differences in the number and arrange- ment of organized tissues, whatever it may have been, is identical with the origin of species.
Whence, then, spring these differences ? The cause of them must be "some distinction either in the anatomic constitution of the respective germs themselves, or in the materials provided by nature upon which those germs can normally discharge their phy- siological function ; or" as Dr. Freke undertakes to prove is the fact, ' some specific distinction in both the embryo and the mate- rials so provided by nature." All organized structures begin, in some way or other, from nu- cleated cells ; that is, from a species of membranous envelope con- taining within it one or more microscopic nuclei, called cyto- blasts or cell germs. Dr. Freke designates these cell germs Organizing Atoms, and says that the manner in which they generate cells is closely analogous to that in which a vessel of water, placed in the centre of a solid mass of snow and salt, is converted into a solid nucleus, enclosed within an envelope of fluid. The principle called caloric (be that principle what it may), which had kept the water fluid before the experiment, having been surrounded by a body which possesses a great affinity for it, has gone over to that body, and an interchange of conditions has taken place. Vary the experiment in imagination, substituting for the vessel of water the germ of the simplest conceivable of vegetations, and for the snow and salt certain inorganic sub- stances—say carbonic acid, or carbonate of ammonia, and water— and then we shall have an organizing agent surrounded by unor- ganized elements. The result will be, that the former will part with the cause (whatever that may be) of its organization, and become inorganic ; whilst the surrounding unorganized matter will receive that cause, and become organic. In other words, an organizing atom or cell germ will have generated a cell, and have become dead or inorganic in conferring life upon inanimate matter.
Organization is not a fixed quantity, so to speak, but is pos- sessed in very various degrees by different substances. Urea, for instance, possesses a very slight degree of organization, and differs but little from carbonate of ammonia in its physical and chemical properties; while muscular fibre, which is formed of very nearly the same components, differs most widely in its properties from the same salt. Now, the existence of degrees in organization necessarily implies an ascending scale of organizing agents with corresponding gradations of function ; for there is no such thing in nature as an abrupt transition in physiological development, and no organizing agent can confer a higher degree of organiza- tion than itself possesses. The specific function of each individual cell germ or organizing agent in this ascending scale, is to gene- rate the specific kind of organized matter which alone can call into operation the specific function of the cell germ next above it in
the scale. The first, or lowest species of cell germ, converts inani- mate or mineral matter into an organized mass, out of which it reproduces its own type, besides furnishing a residual product which the second species of cell germ raises to a still higher de- gree of organization. In like manner, the residual product elaborated by the second species stimulates the third species to exercise its functions, and receives from it still further increased organization; and so on of all succeeding species, to the last. Let us now construct, in imagination, a compound or aggregate or- ganism, consisting of certain distinct species of cell germs having a natural affinity for each other, and destined respectively to generate vascular structure, glandular, muscular, nervous, &c. The result will be that "we have arrived at the composition of the embryonic germ of man. Nay, more, it is possible for us to determine, with a certain degree of precision, the actual anatom i position or arrangement of the several atoms of which this embryo is composed."
To the constitution of a compound organism, two things are necessary : first, a certain number of organizing atoms of different species ; and, secondly, such a mutual affinity between these atoms, that the first shall produce the matter proper to be organ- ized by the second ; the second shall do the same thing for the third, and so on. The embryonic germs of each species of organic beings are thus formed. Each of them is a combination of dif- ferent species of simple organizing agents, which are such in number and in arrangement as to develop in due number and arrangement those organized structures which are distinctive of the given species of vegetable or animal.
Thus far our author has proceeded step by step in his demon- stration of the origin of species by means of organic affinity ; but here he suddenly abandons firm ground, and makes a huge leap into the ocean of conjecture. It is a very old moot question, which was born first, the egg or the fowl ? Dr. Freke settles the point by his ipse dixit, and assumes that the egg was born first. After showing that embryonic germs have been formed by the union of simple organizing agents brought together by the opera- tion
of organic affinity, he proceeds to state his unwavering con- viction, " That all the countless myriads of millions of individual organizing agents, comprised under each distinct species of orga- nizing matter since the commencement of organic creation, have emanated for each distinct species from one solitary germ of that species." He thinks that this ought to be easy of belief, for he asks, " Who doubts that all the individuals of mankind have de- scended from one such germ ? The number of such doubters is few. But few, too, there are who doubt the same fact with regard to all the individuals comprised respectively under each of the other species of animals." Who doubts this, does he say ? Why everybody doubts it except himself. The believers in the separate creation of species deny it absolutely, and it has no place in Mr. Darwin's hypothesis. No one but Dr. Freke imagines that the acorn was created before the oak, or that humanity first appeared on earth in the shape of a Graafian vesicle. He, indeed, traces back in imagination, all life upon the earth to " a chain composed of, perhaps, but a few individual microscopic granules ; " and this chain, considering the limited number of its links, and their dimensions, may, he conceives, "have constituted but a granule of very inconsiderable dimensions." This granule (or granules) " was the embryo of organic creation." It "was one parent of all since existing organic creation ; its other parent being a mineral or inorganic world." In the concluding. stages of its development it produced the earliest embryos of the various species of vegetables and animals, and supplied them severally with the appropriate residual products, so as to enable them to discharge their physio- logical function ; and finally, these embryos and residual products, brought into combination by organic laws, " developed in union the first existing individuals of several different species of vege- table and animal."
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