Nature of the Universe 27 



ences. At a certain time, life came into a lifeless 

 world. At a certain time sensation, emotion, came into 

 a world that was without them. 



The only alternative to this is to hold that there is 

 no distinction of living and non-living; to hold that 

 the statements in our scientific writings on this and 

 on the conditions necessary for life are meaningless 

 and incorrect; to hold that stones and molten or 

 gaseous metals are living; to hold that atoms and 

 electrons and protons and neutrons are in some sense 

 living. But even if we take this alternative, we do not 

 escape from the production of what is new as time 

 passes. The elemental life of electrons and atoms, if 

 there is such life, is clearly of a different type from 

 the organic life of plants, animals, men. No one can 

 hold that an electron or an atom has sensations of red 

 or blue, feelings of nausea, emotions of hope or fear, 

 ideas or purposes. Such hypothetical elemental life 

 does not include the phenomena that are character- 

 istic of life in its higher reaches. These phenomena 

 that are typical of higher life did not at a certain 

 time exist or occur. They came into existence only as 

 certain combinations of the materials of the universe 

 were made. The situation remains therefore in prin- 

 ciple the same, whether we do or do not attribute life 

 to molten metals and to atoms and electrons. In either 

 case phenomena characteristic of the higher reaches 

 of life at first did not exist and have later come into 

 existence. 



Thus new things appear in the universe as time 

 passes and conditions change, new things of the very 



