ORIGIN OF LIFE 227 



temperatures between 6° and 89° C. and before the atmospheric 

 vapors admitted a regular supply of sunlight. The earliest func-. 

 tion of living matter, he thinks, was to capture and transform the 

 electric energy of the chemical elements characteristic of proto- 

 plasm, and this power probably developed only in the presence of 

 heat energy derived from the Earth or the Sun. 



An early step then, in the organization of living matter, was the 

 assemblage of several of the 'life-elements,' and next their group- 

 ing in a state of colloidal suspension — "they were gradually 

 bound by a new form of mutual attraction, whereby the actions 

 and reactions of a group of life elements established a new form 

 of unity in the cosmos, an organic unity, or organism, quite dis- 

 tinct from the larger and smaller aggregations of inorganic matter 

 previously held or brought together by the forces of gravity." 



7. Huxley s Statement 



Such is an outline of some of the foremost attempts of scientists 

 to conceive the origin of the living state of matter from the ele- 

 ments of the Earth. It will be noted that all, except the cosmozoa 

 theory, have one assumption in common — the ' chance ' assem- 

 blage of the various elements of protoplasm: an assumption re- 

 garded by some as not unreasonable when the stupendous dura- 

 tion of time and the almost infinite variations in conditions that 

 were at the disposal of nature are appreciated. According to the 

 statistical theory of probability, if we wait long enough, anything 

 that is possible, no matter how improbable, will happen. Ob- 

 viously this leaves out of the picture the marvellous 'order of 

 nature' which many modern biologists and physicists insist cannot 

 be thought of as emerging from the fortuitous. But the statements 

 of the respective theories necessarily have been presented so briefly 

 here as hardly to be fair to their authors. However, our purpose is 

 attained if they provide an instructive illustration not only of the 

 evolutionary trend which biological thought follows in this prob- 

 lem, but also of the divergent results reached by the scientific 

 imagination when it has few or no facts to guide it. 



So we may more profitably turn to a consideration of the present- 

 day manifestations of life, and dismiss the insolvable problem of 

 the origin of life on the Earth with the conservative statement 

 penned more than half a century ago by Huxley: "Looking back 

 through the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record of the 



