150 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



life on earth is due to a confusion of organic, with living 

 and organized, substances. It is only in the production of 

 organic substances that the chemist can vie with the plant 

 or animal. These are lifeless and unorganized carbon com- 

 pounds, which are termed organic because they are elabo- 

 rated by living organisms as a metaplastic by-product of 

 their metabolism. Such substances, however, are not to be 

 confounded with animate matter, e.g. a living cell and its 

 organelles, or even with organized matter, e.g. dead proto- 

 plasm. These the chemist cannot duplicate; for vitality and 

 organization, as we have seen, are things that elude both 

 his analysis and his synthesis. Even with respect to the pro- 

 duction of organic substances, the parallelism between the 

 living cell and the chemical laboratory is far from being a 

 perfect one. Speaking of the metaplastic or organic products 

 of cells, Benjamin Moore says: "Most of these are so com- 

 plex that they have not yet been synthesized by the organic 

 chemist; nay, even of those that have been synthesized, it 

 may be remarked that all proof is wanting that the syntheses 

 have been carried out in identically the same fashion and by 

 the employment of the same forms of energy in the case of 

 the cell as in the chemist's laboratory. The conditions in 

 the cell are widely different, and at the temperature of the 

 cell and with such chemical materials as are at hand in the 

 cell no such organic syntheses have been artificially carried 

 out by the forms of energy extraneous to living tissue." ("Re- 

 cent Advances in Physiology and Bio-Chemistry," p. 10.) Be 

 that as it may, however, the prospect of a laboratory syn- 

 thesis of an organic substance like chlorophyll affords no 

 ground whatever for expecting a chemical synthesis of living 

 matter. The chlorophyllic tail is inadequate to the task of 

 wagging the dog of organic life. In this connection, Yves 

 Delage's sarcastic comment on Schaaffhausen's theory is 

 worthy of recall. The latter had suggested (in 1892) that life 

 was initiated by a chemical reaction, in which water, air, and 

 mineral salts united under the influence of light and heat 



