The Third Approach 



THE IMPORTANCE OF SALT AND WATER FOR 



LIFE AND GROWTH 



1. THE OCEAN, THE CRADLE OF LIFE 



We have attempted to visualize the supposedly lifeless 

 age preceding life generation, when non-living organic 

 matter began to interact with enzymes. Such reactions 

 can occur only if the carbon compounds and the enzymes 

 acting upon them are dissolved in water. Thus we are 

 forced to assume that those chemical reactions which we 

 regard as fore-runners of vital processes must have occurred 

 in lakes or in oceans, probably in the latter since only in 

 large bodies of water would the conditions have been suffi- 

 ciently uniform to continue undisturbed over the millions 

 of years required for the development of the first cells, 

 through the deposition of inactive non-enzymatic organic 

 matter around the self-regenerating enzymes. From these 

 materials, the first cells were shaped by the forces of crys- 

 tallization which, we have shown in our First Approach, 

 exist in all living things. And because only in the oceans 

 would there have been the constancy of temperature and 

 salt concentration so necessary for the protection of these 

 delicate beginnings of life, we are naturally led to consider 

 the ocean as the cradle of life on our earth. 



Since that early time life has developed at an ever-in- 

 creasing rate. At present, with a history of about a billion 

 years on record, it has developed to enormous diversity and 

 strength. Living organisms crowd the surface of our globe. 

 Many of them long since gave up their ocean habitat, but 

 they still require water and salt to exist. This fundamental 

 condition of their origin has never changed in spite of all 

 that has happened within those odd billion years of their 

 existence. As common experience teaches, water and salt 



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