104 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



of having to do with unbroken descent from an- 

 cestors through all these seons of time, as Darwin 

 taught, and as is commonly believed, 1 we have to 

 do, in the case of Bacteria and their allies, with 

 successive new births of such organisms through- 

 out these ages as primordial forms of life, com- 

 pelled by their different but constantly recurring 

 molecular constitutions to take such and such re- 

 curring forms and properties, just as would be the 

 case with successive new births of different kinds of 

 crystals ? 2 



There is, in fact, now a strong consensus of 

 opinion in the direction of views long ago ex- 

 pressed by Herbert Spencer when he said: 3 







As certainly as molecules of alum have a form of 

 equilibrium, the octahedron, into which they fall when 

 the temperature of their solvent allows them to aggre- 

 gate, so certainly must organic molecules of each 



1 According to Darwin, " all the living forms of life are the 

 lineal descendants of those that lived long before the Cambrian 

 epoch." 



2 The 230 types of crystals are, as Prof. Liveing suggested, 

 the outcome "of the accepted principles of mechanics"; and 

 Prof. W. I. Pope said, in a recent discourse at the Royal In- 

 stitution : " The aid of these, and these alone, has been invoked 

 to show that crystalline structures result from the equilibrium 

 of the attractive and repulsive forces radiating from atomic 

 centres." (Nature, Aug. 11, 1910, p. 187.) 



8 Principles of Biology, 2nd ed., vol. i., Append. D, p. 704. 



