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PARALLEL PATHS

All Rights Reserved

PARALLEL PATHS

A STUDY IN
BIOLOGY, ETHICS, AND ART

BY

T. W. ROLLESTON

“Il faudrait, en un mot, suivre la grande route si profondémentcreusée ... mais il serait nécessaire aussi de tracer en l’air unchemin parallele, une autre route, d’atteindre les en deça et lesaprès, de faire, en un mot, un naturalisme spiritualiste; ce seraitautrement fier, autrement complet, autrement fort.”

J. K. Huysmans.

LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.

3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1908

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PREFACE

IN a recent work by an eminent man of science,Dr. J. Reinke, Professor of Botany at the Universityof Kiel, there occurs a passage which I cannotdo better than place in the forefront of this book asan indication of its aim.

“Physiology,” writes Professor Reinke, “has become thestudy of the movements which, taken together, make uplife. There is no manner of doubt that nourishment,metabolism,1 reproduction, development, and sensationrest on processes of movement which depend on materialsystems of peculiar molecular conformation. For thebodies of plants and of animals are material systems whoseconformation is of a most intricate character.

“So far as physiology has at present advanced in theanalysis of these phenomena of movement, their problemshave fallen naturally into two groups. The first of thesegroups of phenomena is comparatively transparent, andstands in agreement with the general processes of thematerial world; it can be investigated by observation andexperiment. We may, therefore, hope to decipher it completely,and to reduce it, in the end, to chemico-physicalprocesses. Of this kind are the phenomena of nutrition,taking that word in its widest sense. But behind these[Pg vi]processes there stand the facts of development and ofreproduction, and here, in all investigations, and in spiteof every attempt to demonstrate a basis of physical energy,research finds itself confronted by an X, a factor whichmocks every effort to explain it by physics or chemistry.And this X which lurks in all the phenomena of developmenttakes a part in the nutritive processes also; soessential a factor does it appear in all the processes of lifethat chemical and physical forces alone would not suffice tokeep alive even the most rudimentary of organisms, not tomention creating such an organism out of non-livingchemical constituents.”2

If this X force exists and can be established, itwill give us the clue, I believe, to much more thanthe operations of physical nature. The followingpages are an attempt to establish it, to define itscharacter, and to indicate the lines on which this unknownfactor in evolution seems to bring into arational unity the phenomena of the physical worldand the moral and æsthetic faculties of man. Thetime appears to have come for such an attempt. Thefermentation of mind produced by Darwin’s massiveand victorious promulgation of the evolution theoryis beginning to subside; it is now possible in somemeasure to take stock of what has been destroyed, ofwhat has been left intact, by the immense tidal wave...