302 ORGANISATION IN SPACE AND TIME 



out within it in a co-ordinated and consequent way. The 

 comparatively simple and still lifeless systems which must 

 have been elaborated at some time from organic material in 

 the waters of the primaeval ocean, and which formed the 

 starting point on the way to the development of life, must 

 have undergone evolution leading to both the complica- 

 tion and perfection of their three-dimensional structure, and 

 also to improvements in their temporal co-ordination, giving 

 rise to the ordered harmony of the processes occurring within 

 them. 



These two aspects of organisation are inseparable from 

 one another and it is only for convenience of exposition that 

 we shall sometimes discuss them separately in what follows. 



As we have already seen, the purely abiogenic evolution of 

 organic substances on the surface of the Earth, in the waters 

 of the primaeval ocean, must have led to the formation of 

 very diverse substances which, in some cases, were of ex- 

 tremely high molecular weight, in particular protein-like 

 polypeptides and polynucleotides. 



A characteristic feature of these substances, which include 

 individual proteins and even simple protein-like polypep- 

 tides, is the readiness with which they form complexes with 

 other organic substances of high molecular weight, among 

 them, with other proteins or polypeptides. Associations of 

 this sort between different protein-like substances give rise 

 to multimolecular formations with physical and chemical 

 properties which differ substantially from those of their 

 separate components. Furthermore, the protein-like polymers 

 arising out of these associations, like natural proteins, could, 

 under certain conditions, form multimolecular swarms which, 

 when they had reached a particular size, would separate out 

 from the solution into a new phase or collection of phases 

 which might be considered to possess a relatively simple 

 ' morphology '. To this category belong, in the first place, 

 precipitates formed by the coagulation of colloids, gels and, 

 finally, materials aggregating in liquid form. 



Quite a long time ago, at the turn of the century, many 

 workers (e.g.^) noticed that in solutions of hydrophilic colloids 

 there occurred another phenomenon as well as coagulation. 

 This was called ' demixing ' (Entmischung).^ The solution 



