THE ORIGIN OF LIFE: A CHEMIST'S FANTASY 327 



a condition in which a living body consisted only of one form or 

 type of living matter preceded that in which the body consisted 

 of two or more structural components. 



The issue thus raised is an important one. Regarding the 

 cell as the vital unit, as " the simplest protoplasmic organ which 

 is capable of living alone," in other words, capable of growing 

 and of reproducing itself, the question I venture to put is whether 

 life did not begin only when the cell was first constituted, 

 whether the materials formed prior to this period, however 

 complex, were not all incoordinated and therefore inanimate. 



The term cell unfortunately has had somewhat different 

 meanings attached to it. At first, as Prof. Minchin tells us, only 

 the limiting membrane or cell wall was thought of, the fluid or 

 viscous contents being regarded as of secondary importance ; 

 the primary meaning, in fact, was that of a little box or capsule. 

 It then became apparent that the fluid contents were the essential 

 living part, the cell wall merely an adaptive product of the 

 contained living substance or protoplasm. Consequently, the 

 cell was defined as a small mass or corpuscle of the living sub- 

 stance, which might either surround itself with a cell wall or 

 remain naked and without any protective envelope. Further 

 advance involved the recognition of a nucleus as an essential 

 component of the cell. 



I cannot think of a naked mass of protoplasm, call it chromatin 

 (stainable substance) or what you will, playing the part of an 

 organism ; at most, I imagine, it would function as yeast zymase 

 functions. 



If it is to grow and be reproduced, the nuclear material must 

 be shut up along with the appropriate food materials and such 

 constructive appliances as are required to bring about the associa- 

 tion of the various elements entering into the structure of the 

 organism. The enclosure of the naked protoplasmic mass within 

 a differential septum (cell wall) through which only the simpler 

 food materials could gain an entry seems to me therefore a 

 necessary act in the evolution of life. From this point of view, 

 it matters little which came first — chromatin or cytoplasm. 



The argument put forward by Mr. Eccles in support of the 

 contention that nuclear material is the more primitive, based on 

 the preponderance of the open chain derivative arginine in the 

 nucleus and of benzenoid derivatives such as tyrosine in the 

 cytoplasm, cannot be regarded as valid. The difference between 



