8 Can Science Explain Life? 



structures is generally admitted, but there is a 

 prevailing opinion that the chemical configura- 

 tions which are necessary for this purpose must 

 be extremely complex. The failure of all pre- 

 vious efforts to devise some type of chemical 

 structure which is capable of duplicating itself 

 does not prove, however, that the solution of the 

 problem must lie in the direction of extreme com- 

 plexity. The complex chemical structures which 

 make up the tissues of the higher plants and ani- 

 mals have developed gradually during the course 

 of evolution, and the fact that they are necessary 

 for the proper physiological functioning of the 

 particular organisms in which they now occur 

 does not prove that they were also the original 

 cause of the incipient life processes in the most 

 primitive submicroscopic forms of life from which 

 these higher plants and animals have developed. 

 With the exception of certain plasmodia and 

 syncytia which have no definite cell walls, the 

 bodies of all higher plants and animals consist of 

 aggregates of separate living cells, all of which 

 are constituted according to the same general 

 plan in that they all consist of an outer cytoplasm 

 which may contain central bodies, asters, fibrillae, 

 plastids, Golgi-bodies, etc., and an inner nucleus 

 which may contain chromosomes, linin network, 

 etc. Nucleated cells like those which form the 



