92 A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 



The ideas which we have been discussing are understand- 

 able up to a point because a very negative attitude towards 

 the problem of the origin of life prevailed in the biological 

 literature of the twenties and thirties of this century. It was 

 treated as a problem upon which it was not worth while for 

 any serious investigator to waste his time. 



The evolutionary theory of the origin of life. 



In spite of the widespread prevalence of mechanistic 

 opinions at the beginning of the twentieth century, the 

 evolutionary approach to the problem of the origin of life 

 was not entirely abandoned. As we have already pointed out, 

 the great minds of the nineteenth century favoured this 

 approach to the problem. 



As early as the 1870s F. Engels indicated that the evolu- 

 tionary development of matter was the only path by which 

 life could have arisen. According to Engels, life does not 

 arise arbitrarily and is not eternal. It arises by a process 

 of evolution of matter whenever conditions are favourable." 



These profoundly significant ideas of Engels were, how- 

 ever, not widely enough reflected in the work of the experi- 

 mental scientists of those times. Only a very few of them 

 publicly supported an evolutionary solution of the problem 

 of the origin of life. As an example we may point to an 

 address given by V. Belyaev in 1893 in the University of 

 Warsaw. In it this distinguished Russian botanist and cytolo- 

 gist sketched, though still in rather general terms, the gradual 

 development of matter which was achieved " in the great 

 laboratory of nature " on the way to the development of life. 

 In this connection he pointed out that " We are hardly likely 

 to succeed in obtaining quickly that on which nature has 

 spent thousands of years. "^® 



An address delivered by E. A. Schafer" at the annual 

 meeting of the British Association in Dundee was of great 

 importance in the history of the problem under discussion. 

 In dealing with the question of the origin of life Schafer 

 said : 



We are not only justified in believing, but are compelled to 

 believe that living matter must have owed its origin to causes 



