ELEMENTS OF ORIGINALITY 176 



his volume, The Origin and Evolution of Life, says: 

 "The difference between the non-Hving world and 

 the living world seems like a vast chasm when we 

 think of a very high organism like man, the result 

 of perhaps a hundred million years of evolution. 

 But the difference between primordial earth, water 

 and atmosphere and the lowliest known organisms 

 which secure their energy directly from simple 

 chemical compounds is not so vast a chasm that we 

 need despair of bridging it some day by solving at 

 least one problem as to the actual nature of life — 

 namely, whether it is solely physicochemical in its 

 energies, or whether it includes a plus energy or ele- 

 ment which may have distinguished LIFE from the 

 beginning."^^ 



As Hans Driesch points out: "It is the final ob- 

 ject of all biology to tell us what it ultimately means 

 to say that a body is 'living.' "^^ 



I insist, there is nothing intermediate between 

 living matter and non-living matter. As in all other 

 physical processes, the change from one state to the 

 other state is definite and abrupt. As Poincare 

 explained, "a physical system is susceptible of a 

 finite number only of distinct conditions; it jumps 

 from one of these conditions to another without pass- 



'* The Origin and Evolution of Life, 281. 



" The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, 16. 



