It is impossible accurately to determine, simultaneously, the exact location
and the velocity of a moving object; any attempt at measurement of either
inevitably involves change in the other. The same sort of a paradox confronts
mortal man when he undertakes the chemical analysis of protoplasm. The
chemist can elucidate the chemistry of dead protoplasm, but he cannot discern
either the physical organization or the dynamic performance of living
protoplasm. Ever will the scientist come nearer and nearer the secrets of life, but
never will he find them and for no other reason than that he must kill protoplasm
in order to analyze it. Dead protoplasm weighs the same as living protoplasm, but
it is not the same.
There is original endowment of adaptation in living things and beings. In
every living plant or animal cell, in every living organism—material or spiritual—there
is an insatiable craving for the attainment of ever-increasing perfection
of environmental adjustment, organismal adaptation, and augmented life
realization. These interminable efforts of all living things evidence the existence
within them of an innate striving for perfection.
The most important step in plant evolution was the development of chlorophyll-making ability, and the second greatest advance was the evolution of the spore into the complex seed. The spore is most efficient as a reproductive agent, but it lacks the potentials of variety and versatility inherent in the seed.
One of the most serviceable and complex episodes in the evolution of the higher types of animals consisted in the development of the ability of the iron in the circulating blood cells to perform in the double role of oxygen carrier and carbon dioxide remover. And this performance of the red blood cells illustrates how evolving organisms are able to adapt their functions to varying or changing environment. The higher animals, including man, oxygenate their tissues by the action of the iron of the red blood cells, which carries oxygen to the living cells and just as efficiently removes the carbon dioxide. But other metals can be made to serve the same purpose. The cuttlefish employs copper for this function, and the sea squirt utilizes vanadium.
The continuation of such biologic adjustments is illustrated by the evolution of teeth in the higher Urantia mammals; these attained to thirty-six in man's remote ancestors, and then began an adaptative readjustment toward thirty-two in the dawn man and his near relatives. Now the human species is slowly gravitating toward twenty-eight. The process of evolution is still actively and adaptatively in progress on this planet.
But many seemingly mysterious adjustments of living organisms are purely chemical, wholly physical. At any moment of time, in the blood stream of any human being there exists the possibility of upward of 15,000,000 chemical reactions between the hormone output of a dozen ductless glands.
The lower forms of plant life are wholly responsive to physical, chemical,
and electrical environment. But as the scale of life ascends, one by one the mind
ministries of the seven adjutant spirits become operative, and the mind becomes
increasingly adjustive, creative, co-ordinative, and dominative. The ability of
animals to adapt themselves to air, water, and land is not a supernatural endowment,
but it is a superphysical adjustment.
