LIFE, CARBON'S OUTSTANDING PROPERTY 83 



mous period of time. For we know that enzymes can func- 

 tion only in a limited range of temperature and each enzyme 

 can attack only a few .substances. Millions of years must 

 have passed before some of the enzymes formed by light- 

 nings encountered a substance which they could attack. 

 Probably it was a still longer time before self-regenerating 

 enzymes met the proper substances in an environment 

 suitable for interaction. Moreover, many enzymes are 

 fragile substances and disappear unless they are regenerated. 

 There was certainly no streamlined efficiency in the earliest 

 functioning of enzymes, preparatory to the generation of 

 life. 



We may assume that enzymatic chemical reactions ten- 

 tatively appeared here and there and again disappeared. 

 Finally self-regenerating enzymes came to stay and they 

 grew and developed probably in the lap of the ocean where 

 the temperature, the supply of reactive material, and other 

 conditions were most stable. Gradually conditions and 

 organisms appeared which resembled more and more closely 

 what we nowadays call life. Millions of years of prepara- 

 tion were thus necessary, as it seems, before real life in its 

 most primitive form appeared on the earth. 



Since we know that the evolution of life has taken millions 

 of years, it is hardly reasonable to suppose that its creation 

 occurred in a flash. Yet our assumption of a very gradual 

 development of the preparatory processes is a thought 

 which never seems to have occurred to men who meditate 

 about such problems. It is, of course, not surprising that 

 all the ancient histories of creation describe the origin of 

 life as an act of short duration. But even some of the 

 modern scientific theories take it for granted that life sud- 

 denly appeared on the earth, although they assume that at 

 first only primitive cells were there. Such an assumption 

 is made by the widely accepted theory of panspermia ac- 

 cording to which life was propagated from germ cells scat- 



