PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 28 1 



Of one thing we may be sure. The artificial production of 

 protoplasm would not be a solution of the problem of life; since 

 the nature of this problem must be grasped, in all its length 

 and breadth, with all its difficulties, before we can hope to solve 

 it; for the transformation of the truth that protoplasm is the 

 physical basis of life into a dogmatic assertion that life is the 

 sum of the physical properties of protoplasm is no solution. 



Life cannot go on without food; and we may say that bread 

 is the staff of life; but the influence which shapes food into the 

 specific structure of an organism exquisitely adapted to the con- 

 ditions of the world around it is to be sought somewhere else 

 than in the properties of bread. 



One of the distinctive characteristics of this organizing influ- 

 ence is that it may exist without any corresponding visible organi- 

 zation; for while the germ which is to become a man has an 

 organization of its own, we are most assuredly unable to find in 

 it any traces of the organization of a man. Another character- 

 istic is that, so far as we know, it has been handed down, in an 

 unbroken line of continuity, for many million years, from the 

 oldest living things, generation after generation, to the modern 

 forms of life, so that it has leavened the whole lump of living 

 matter. 



While we know nothing of its origin, and while we must guard 

 ourselves from all unproved assumptions, there seem, from our 

 present standpoint, to be insuperable objections to the view that 

 this influence is either matter or energy. While we know it only 

 in union with protoplasm, it would seem that, if it is matter, it must 

 long ago have reached the minimum divisibile. If it is physical 

 energy, or wave motion, or perigenesis of plastidules, it is hard to 

 understand why it has not all been dissipated long ago, or how it 

 can multiply itself. 



We know that it is, and this is in itself a fact of the utmost 

 moment, even if we are never to find out what it is. We are told 

 that belief that it has at some time arisen from the properties of 

 inorganic matter is a logical necessity, but the only logical necessity 

 is that where knowledge ends we should admit ignorance. 



Honesty of purpose and expediency unite in the demand that 

 we build biology upon a foundation which can never be shaken; 



