LIFE, CARBON'S OUTSTANDING PROPERTY 69 



to be possible, since fraudulent reports about alleged results 

 were in wide circulation. The delusive character of these 

 reports and the methods described therein were at last un- 

 masked with the development of scientific chemistry early 

 in the nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth 

 century, the belief in the impossibility of transforming the 

 elements was more widely held than today's belief in the 

 impossibility of the rise of life from non-living matter. For 

 nearly a century, hundreds of able chemists had investigated 

 indefatigably every possibility of transforming elements, 

 and saw no success. So they believed themselves justified 

 in saying that such a transformation would never be ac- 

 complished. Yet a very short time later, new methods of 

 investigation were discovered by which it was definitely 

 shown that elements can be transformed by radioactivity 

 in some cases. 



In the light of this experience, to say that life cannot 

 arise from non-living matter seems to be hardly more than 

 a creed based on doubtful authority. To prove it, we 

 should exclude by experimentation all possibility of gener- 

 ating artificially anything remotely resembling a living 

 organism. It seems that this has never been undertaken. 

 On the contrary, some experiments point to the possibility 

 of making structures which show at least a remote re- 

 semblance to living ones. 



6. THE SMALLEST LIVING THING COMPARED WITH THE 

 SMALLEST PARTICLES OF NON-LIVING MATTER 



It is almost certain that the first forms of life to appear 

 on the earth were the simplest ones and probably also the 

 smallest ones possible. This idea is in general agreement 

 not only with the conceptions of the theory of evolution 

 but also with the evidence brought forth by geological 

 research, since the oldest fossil remains in the crust of the 

 earth are the simplest and smallest ones. 



