METEORITES AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 



85 



good in the ethical sense. And yet, when we act 

 with this most perfect freedom, it may be said 

 that it is not we that act, but Man that worketh 

 in us. He whose life is habitually governed by 

 reason and conscience is the free and wise man 

 of the philosophers of all ages. The highest free- 

 dom, then, is identical with the Spirit of Man — 



" The earth-god Freedom, the lonely 



Face lightening, the footprint unshod, 

 Not as one man crucified only 



Nor scourged with but one life's rod ; 

 The soul that is substance of nations, 

 Eeiucarnate with fresh generations ; 

 The great god Man, which is God." 1 



The social organism itself is but a part of the 

 universal cosmos, and like all else is subject to 

 the uniformity of Nature. The production and 

 distribution of wealth, the growth and effect of 



administrative machinery, the education of the 

 race, these are cases of general laws which con- 

 stitute the science of sociology. The discovery 

 of exact laws has only one purpose — the guidance 

 of conduct by means of them. The laws of politi- 

 cal economy are as rigid as those of gravitation ; 

 wealth distributes itself as surely as water finds 

 its level. But the use we have to make of the 

 laws of gravitation is not to sit down and cry 

 " Kismet ! " to the flowing stream, but to construct 

 irrigation-works. And the use which the Repub- 

 lic must make of the laws of sociology is to 

 rationally organize society for the training of the 

 best citizens. Much patient practice of comrade- 

 ship is necessary before society will be qualified 

 to organize itself in accordance with reason. But 

 those who can read the signs of the times read in 

 them that the kingdom of Man is at hand. — The 

 Nineteenth Century. 



METEOKITES AND THE OKIGIN OF LIFE. 



By WALTER FLIGHT, D. Sc, F. G. S. 



THE question which has so often been raised, 

 How did life originate on our earth? has 

 again been brought before the consideration of 

 the scientific world by Prof. Allen Thomson, in 

 the presidential address delivered at the Plymouth 

 meeting of the British Association during the 

 present autumn. One explanation to which he 

 refers is that which formed a prominent feature 

 in the address of a former occupant of the pres- 

 idential chair, Sir William Thomson, who six 

 years ago suggested as a possible solution of this 

 great question that the germs of life might have 

 been borne to our globe by the meteorites which 

 are scattered through space, and which from time 

 to time fall upon the surface of our planet. If, 

 he maintained, we trace back the physical history 

 of our earth, we are brought to a red-hot, melted 

 globe on which no life could exist. The earth 

 I was first fit for life, and there was no living thing 

 i upon it. Can any probable solution, consistent 

 with the ordinary course of Nature, be found to 

 explain the problem of its first appearance? 

 When a lava-stream flows down the side of Vesu- 

 vius or Etna it quickly cools and becomes solid, 

 and after a ft-w weeks or years it teems with 

 vegetable and animal life, which life originated by 

 1 Swinburne, " Songs before Sunrise." 



the transport of seed and ova and by the migra- 

 tion of individual living creatures. When a vol- 

 canic island emerges from the sea, and after a few 

 years is clothed with vegetation, we do not hesi- 

 tate to assume that seed has been wafted to it 

 through the air, or floated to it on rafts. It is not 

 possible — and if possible, is it not probable — 

 that the beginning of vegetable life on the earth 

 may be similarly explained ? Every year thou- 

 sands, probably millions, of fragments of solid 

 matter fall upon the earth. Whence came 

 they ? What is the previous history of any 

 one of them ? Was it created in. the beginning 

 of time an amorphous mass ? The idea is so un. 

 acceptable that, tacitly or explicitly, all men dis- 

 card it. It is often assumed that all, and it is 

 certain that some, meteorites are fragments sev- 

 ered from larger masses and launched free into 

 space. It is as sure that collisions must occur 

 between great masses moving through space as 

 it is that ships, steered without intelligence di- 

 rected to prevent collisions, could not cross and 

 recross the Atlantic for thousands of years with 

 immunity from such catastrophes. When two 

 great masses come into collision in space it is 

 certain that a large part of each of them is 

 melted; but it appears equally certain that in 



