GREAT STEPS IN ORGANIC EVOLUTION 385 



that can be profitably said. In a letter to Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer expressed his sense of 

 the extreme difficulty of the problem. " We cannot form the 

 slightest idea how protoplasm came into existence." It is 

 not a mere substance; it is an organisation, and when we 

 speak of the complex substances that the chemist makes 

 we should remember that he usually does so by complicated 

 processes. " Protoplasm appears to be able to manufacture 

 them straight off in a way of which the chemist cannot 

 form the slightest conception ' (quoted in Alfred Russel 

 Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences. By James Marchant. 

 1916. Vol. II., pp. 95-8). 



If in the future it should become easier for a biologist 

 to say that simple organisms probably evolved naturally from 

 non-living materials, from some colloidal carbonaceous slime 

 activated by ferments, or otherwise; if it should be found 

 possible to make in the laboratory a microscopic material 

 system which lived ; what difference would it make to our 

 general thinking save that the domain of the inorganic would 

 appear more continuous than before with the realm of or- 

 ganisms ? If it should become easier in the course of this 

 century for a biologist to say that living creatures were prob- 

 ably born of the dust of the earth and the dew of heaven, 

 with the sun shining on both, then would all the groaning 

 and travailing of the inorganic appear more intelligible. 

 Then also it would be clearer than ever that there was in 

 the beginning more than could meet the eye, more than 

 could be summed up in the laws of matter and motion. For 

 no one can conjure ' mind ' out of ' matter ', even if he 

 invoke ' Evolution ' many times. 



In ancient days fire was lit from fire, and it was naturally 

 a sacred duty to keep the fire burning. Before the dis- 



