46 ETERNITY OF LIFE 



that life is in principle eternal while still reckoning that 

 they had based their position on materialistic principles. 

 Thus, for example, the very able Russian plant physiologist 

 and biochemist S. Kostychev® wrote in the conclusion of his 

 book On the appearance of life on the Earth: "When the 

 echoes of the battle about spontaneous generation finally die 

 away, everyone will recognise that life only changes its form, 

 but never arises from dead matter ". However, wishing to 

 escape from the justifiable accusation of idealism, he added : 

 " It must be noted that this point of view has nothing in 

 common with the theory of vitalism, which is nebulous and 

 hostile to progress ". All the same, this denial is unconvinc- 

 ing, and it is not easy to see how one can combine acceptance 

 of the eternity of life with denial of ' the eternal vital prin- 

 ciple ' or ' life force '. 



As early as the late nineteenth century, F. Engels^ gave 

 detailed consideration to the principle of the eternity of life, 

 and showed convincingly that it is incompatible with con- 

 sistent materialism. He quotes a very characteristic remark 

 made by Liebig to M. Wagner in 1868 : 



We may only assume that life is just as old and just as eternal 

 as matter itself, and the whole controversial point about the 

 origin of life seems to me to be disposed of by this simple 

 assumption. In point of fact, why should not organic life be 

 thought of as present from the very beginning just as much as 

 carbon and its compounds (!)* or as the whole of uncreatable 

 and indestructible matter in general, and the forces that are 

 eternally bound up with the motion of matter in space (II. 7, 



P- 390)- 



Engels points out that such views can only be based on 

 recognition of a specific vital force, such as a ' formative 

 principle ', and do not at all correspond with a materialist 

 picture of the universe. Engels further wrote in comment : 



Liebig's assertion that carbon compounds are just as eternal 

 as carbon itself, is doubtful, if not false. . . The compounds 

 of carbon are eternal in the sense that under the same conditions 

 of mixture, temperature, pressure, electric potential, etc., they 

 are always reproduced. But that, for instance, only the simplest 



* Engels' italics and exclamation mark. 



