26 The Uniyerse and Life 



between what is living and what is not living mean 

 anything? Has our enumeration of conditions under 

 which life can occur any significance? If so, if these 

 statements and distinctions are valid, this fact is of 

 vast import for our understanding of the nature of 

 the world and the world process. 



For we discover that there was a time in the history 

 of our solar system when the physical conditions were 

 such that life could not exist. This has indeed been 

 the history not only of the solar system, but of all 

 parts of the universe. There was an early period in 

 which the physical and chemical conditions were of 

 the kind in which life does not occur. If we now ex- 

 periment with such conditions, we find that they de- 

 stroy hfe. Both the outer phenomena and the inner 

 experiences of life disappear under the conditions 

 that prevailed at earlier epochs. 



If the distinctions that we make in our books of 

 physiology between the living and the non-living are 

 valid, then life did not exist in those early periods. 

 Later, life appeared. Therefore it came into existence 

 at a particular time, when the conditions and com- 

 binations occurred that permit and give origin to life. 



I believe that we shall do best to hold that our usual 

 distinctions between the living and the non-living are 

 indeed sound and valid. We find them a necessity in 

 practice; without them, biological science becomes 

 nonsense. Assuming this distinction to be sound, we 

 must hold that, at an early period, life did not exist. 

 At first without life, the universe later produced it, 

 including both its outer aspects and its inner experi- 



