124 The Bible of Nature 



obes," in Sir William Ramsay's Helium cells, in 

 Lehmann's liquid crystals, and in the wonderful 

 crystallization phenomena described by von 

 Schron. One of the latest of the courageous es- 

 says bearing on experimental biogenesis (M. Kuck- 

 uck's :< L6sung des Problems der Urzeugung," 

 1907), points out that if we add Barium chloride, 

 or a salt of Radium, or a salt of Nuclein, to a gela- 

 tiner peptone - asparagin - glycerine -sea-water mix- 

 ture, we may get little corpuscles which feed, grow, 

 segment, move, and, in fact, do most things except 

 live. 



It is gratuitous to suppose that experiments 

 along these lines may not help us to get on the track 

 of Nature's synthesis, or that they may not have 

 important practical results. It should be re- 

 membered too that while we have no experimental 

 reason for saying that we can make an organism 

 artificially, we have no experimental reason for 

 saying that we cannot. We have no way of proving 

 the impossibility of an occurrence that is not a con- 

 tradiction in terms. 



On the other hand, it is the verdict of common 

 sense and exact science alike that living creatures 

 stand apart from inanimate systems. In the in- 

 animate world we find order, but no self-adjusting 

 adaptation; response to stimulus, but no effective 

 self-preservative response; struggle but no strug- 

 gle for existence; change but no creative agency. 



