THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 133 



contrary, all evidence is against the supposition that brute 

 matter is able to evolve of itself into living matter. It can, 

 indeed, be transformed into plants, animals, and men through 

 the action of an appropriate external agent (i.e. solely through 

 the agency of the living organism), but it cannot acquire the 

 perfections of living matter by means of its own inherent 

 powers. It cannot vitalize, or sensitize, itself through the un- 

 aided activity of its own physicochemical energies. Only when 

 it comes under the superior influence of preexistent life can it 

 ascend to higher degrees of entitive perfection. It does not 

 become of itself life, sensibility, and intelligence. It must 

 first be drawn into communion with what is already alive, 

 before it can acquire life and sensibility, or share indirectly 

 in the honors of intelligence (as the substrate of the cerebral 

 imagery whence the human mind abstracts its conceptual 

 thought). Apart from this unique influence, inorganic mat- 

 ter is impotent to raise itself in the scale of existence, but, 

 if captured, molded, and transmuted by a living being, it may 

 progress to the point of forming with the human soul one 

 single nature, one single substance, one single person. The 

 evolution of matter exemplified in organic metabolism is ob- 

 viously passive, and such an evolution of the primal organ- 

 isms out of non-living matter even the opponents of the hy- 

 pothesis of spontaneous generation concede. But spontaneous 

 generation implies an active evolution of the living from the 

 lifeless, and this is the point around which the controversy 

 wages. It would, of course, be utterly irrational to deny to 

 the Supreme Lord and Author of Life the power of vivifying 

 matter previously inanimate and inert, and hence the origin 

 of organic life from inorganic matter by a formative (not 

 creative) act of the Creator is the conclusion to which the 

 denial of abiogenesis logically leads. 



The hypothesis of spontaneous generation is far older than 

 the theory of transformism. It goes back to the Greek prede- 

 cessors of Aristotle, at least, and may be of far greater antiq- 

 uity. It was based, as is well known, upon an erroneous 



