If there were no extraneous supervising architect to adjust and correlate each organ and part to every other, there would be no harmony of form, size, nor structure in the edifice. Surely, the atoms and cells in the right leg would have no knowledge of the form, size, nor structure of the left; and no organ, nor any part of the body, would have any power to adjust itself, automatically, to any other.
Sec. 48. Proposition 15. Each Human Body is Specially Endowed with Life
Neither the spermatozoön nor the ovum is a living creature, for neither of them has the power to take and assimilate food; nor to develop and grow, alone. But when they unite and fuse, this combination begins to live, it absorbs and assimilates food or nourishment, develops, divides and produces an infinite number of daughter-cells. The atoms in the fertilized ovum are identically the same that were in the spermatozoön and ovum before the fusion occurred. Perhaps these atoms form new chemical combinations. But we cannot believe that any possible combination of atoms could automatically take on the energies and phenomena of life. Any good chemist can make the same combination of atoms that is found in the fertilized ovum; but his combination would not absorb and assimilate food, it would not live, develop nor grow.
Life is not a property of matter but something wholly different from it. Matter may exist without life; but apparently, life cannot exist without matter. It is evident that the atoms of which the human body is composed did not manifest the phenomena nor the energies of life until they were grouped into that body; on the other hand the body does not manifest vital energies after its death. Life begins at a particular moment and ceases at another specific instant.
If a piece of iron be charged with electricity, it will manifest electrical energy so long as it remains charged. But when the electricity passes from it, the iron ceases to exhibit such phenomena. So, when the human body is charged or endowed with life, it continues to manifest vital phenomena until life passes out of it.
Life is bestowed on the several species of animal under divers conditions. Thus, it is bestowed on the fertilized human ovum in the genital organs of the mother, for the reason that this is the best, if not the only, place for it to develop and grow. It is bestowed on the eggs of fishes in the water; and upon the eggs of birds, after they have passed out of the bodies of the mother bird. Let us consider the hen’s egg for a moment. When laid it contains a fertilized ovum and “the white and the yellow” of the egg. It is a complete and finished egg. But it has no life. Unless it be placed under a sitting hen or in an incubator, it will decay and disintegrate.