THE APPEARANCE OF LIFE 61 



albumen, the simple white of an egg, possessing no life, 

 might be nothing more than a temporary check. Had not 

 Berthelot, for instance, succeeded in combining carbon directly 

 with hydrogen and nitrogen, had he not formed synthetic 

 sugar ; and had not chemists before, during and after his day 

 succeeded in obtaining an infinite number of substances which 

 had once been regarded as the exclusive and peculiar work of the 

 life-force itself ? Directly the chemists could understand the 

 constitution of nitrogenous substances such as albumen — 

 and the most skilful were at work upon it — was there not every 

 likelihood that its reconstruction would be achieved ? And, 

 finally, if protoplasm was merely one of these substances, 

 endowed with specific instability and a particular capacity for 

 combination, was it indeed foolhardy to believe that this, too, 

 would some day appear in the retorts and test-tubes of the 

 chemists ? It would unquestionably emerge as an indefinite 

 and amorphous mass, but could it not be given the form and the 

 perpetuating activity which would make a living organism ? . . . 

 All this beautiful dream the experiments of Pasteur threatened 

 to destroy at one blow. If, indeed, the free play of forces and 

 substances was incapable of producing living matter, if it was 

 necessary in order to account for its formation to have recourse 

 to a direct act of creation, why not then admit with Cuvier the 

 direct creation of all living beings and consequently the fixity of 

 species ? To accept the foolish theory of spontaneous generation 

 was to undermine that whole doctrine of evolution which had 

 proved so satisfactory to man's reason and had, moreover, 

 been substantiated by so many facts. 



As the difficulties in the way of reconstructing living 

 substances appeared to be invincible, the idea soon occurred 

 to some to explain its advent as from another world. In 1821 

 de Montlivault decided that life-germs from other planets, 

 perhaps those furthest removed from us, had been brought 

 thence to our earth — no one could tell how, for no winds existed 

 in the interplanetary spaces to carry dust from one to another. 

 These germs had developed on earth and given rise to the first 

 living organisms. In 1853 the hypothesis of de Montlivault was 

 taken up again and developed by Count Keyserling. Life, he 

 said, is eternal, like the world itself ; but in the course of ages 

 changes its habitat. Germs travel unceasingty from one stellar 

 system to another, quicken into being those stars ready to 



