The Wonder of Life 51 



the investigations in question throw light on the great 

 step from the non-living and inorganic to the living 

 and- organic, the methods utilized in the synthesis 

 being not far removed from those that came into 

 operation in Nature when organisms first emerged. 



§3. Outlook on Animate Nature, 



As we look around us in the world of living creatures 

 — multitudinous and yet orderly, balanced and yet 

 changeful, plastic and yet insurgent — we cannot but 

 be filled with admiration. As Aristotle said: "In all 

 these physical things there is something wonderful 

 (OavjjLacrTov)" With Walt Whitman, we say: "Prais'd 

 be the fathomless universe, for life and joy, and for 

 objects and knowledge curious." 



But through our admiring wonder there rises the 

 irresistible question: How has all this come to be as 

 it is? Whence and how has this system of Animate 

 Nature come into being? The old answer, before 

 science got into its stride, was that living creatures 

 arose after a fashion which cannot be scientifically 

 formulated: "And God said, Let the earth bring 

 forth grass ; . . . Let the waters bring forth abun- 

 dantly the moving creature that hath life." There is a 

 certain nobility in this answer, for it suggests some 

 recognition of the fundamental mysteriousness of 

 Nature and of the splendor of what we see; and it 

 also suggests what to many is an open secret, that 

 if we wish to ascribe the visible universe to a source 

 behind which we cannot think, we must say : "In the 

 beginning was Mind, and that Mind was with God, 



