14 WHAT IS LIFE 



as is the effect of all accepted mysticism, it has 

 almost completely estopped any attempts at re- 

 search on what is plainly the most fundamental of 

 all biological problems. 



In all fields of intellectual activity it is given to 

 but few men to be both able and willing to think 

 independently and originally. Unfortunately this 

 is as true of biology as of anything else, and per- 

 haps more so. There have been those, however, who 

 have urged that experimental abiogenesis was the 

 great goal of biology, and that it was a field of 

 study in which young men should busy them- 

 selves. Why, then, has there not been more active 

 research in this field? The answer, I think, is two- 

 fold: in the first place there has been the too will- 

 ing acceptance of the dogma already referred to; 

 in the second place there has been a great dearth 

 of ideas about the matter, of sufficient precision to 

 suggest significant experimentation. The attempts 

 at what was miscalled experimental abiogenesis, 

 which were so neatly bowled over by Pasteur, had 

 little if any real bearing upon the problem. What 

 that fight was chiefly about was merely efficient 

 methods of sterilization. 



There are abundant evidences that the quasi- 

 religious inhibition of efforts at investigation of the 

 transition zone between non-living and living matter 



