52 ORIGIN AND MAINTEN. OF OPT. ACTIVITY 



act. Consequently, the synthesis of the components of 

 new tissues and the growth of the latter will proceed more 

 rapidly with asymmetric than with racemic material. 



If the fundamental physiological processes are more 

 intense in asymmetric systems, the passage from racemic 

 to optically active protoplasm was a significant physio- 

 logical advance which contributed to the survival of asym- 

 metric protoplasm in the process of natural selection. Be- 

 sides, the development of asymmetry, by contributing to 

 the fixity of the internal medium, increased the possibility 

 of independent life for any given organism, in the sense 

 of Claude Bernard. 



6. The Origin of the Asymmetry of Protoplasm. Assum- 

 ing that the asymmetry of protoplasm is maintained by 

 some mechanism devised by nature, a fundamental prob- 

 lem still remains to be solved, that of the origin of the 

 initial inequality of the right and the left components of 

 protoplasm. 



In the study of the causes of the initial asymmetry, the 

 authors have followed two directions. Some have at- 

 tempted to correlate the origin of the asymmetry of 

 matter with the asymmetric influence of terrestrial mag- 

 netism; others have considered asymmetry as originating 

 in a deviation from a statistical average. 



Since C^otton (1896) had shown that solutions of opti- 

 cally active substances possess different coefficients of 

 absorption for the right and the left circularly polarized 

 light, it has been thought that the action of such light 

 might furnish a promising method of obtaining active 

 compounds from racemic ones. 



It is known that the circularly polarized light is found 

 in nature, for instance, when the plane-polarized light 

 from the sky is reflected on the surface of the sea. Byk 

 (1904) suggested that, because of the rotation of the plane 

 of polarization of light by terrestrial magnetism, there 

 must be, in the total quantity of light circularly polarized 

 at the surface of the earth, a predominance of one of the 

 two forms of light. This predominant form acting for 



