184 life's beginning on the earth 



The account of much of the work done with moving oil- 

 drops is indefinite and lamentably poor. Here is a vast 

 field of research in which some noteworthy results have 

 already been achieved, a few of which are described above. 

 Herrera, in particular, has made many valuable experi- 

 ments. But we must realize that in these scientific at- 

 tempts — as in all human activities — certain rules cannot be 

 neglected. 



Scientific workers should never draw suspicious conclu- 

 sions from their findings as, for instance, to say that moving 

 oil-drops represent a form of life. If they violate this un- 

 written law, all of their results will be dumped into the 

 waste basket of disregard — even if real treasures are con- 

 tained therein. Another unwritten law by which every 

 scientist must abide forbids the announcement in the lay 

 press of unverified results that may give rise to general 

 misconceptions. The public, of course, cannot possibly be 

 informed on all details of every line of scientific research, 

 hundreds of which are being pursued. 



Concerning the so-called artificial cells, misunderstand- 

 ings are very prone to arise on account of the wide-spread 

 idea that "the cell is the unit and carrier of life." The cell 

 as a unit of life is one of those meaningless slogans which 

 arise through a misunderstanding of modern scientific 

 specialization. The meaning of the "unit of life" is rather 

 hazy. One may think of the growth of single cells, taken 

 from an animal body, in an artificial nutritive medium. 

 Such cells develop and multiply without direction or pur- 

 pose in their own characteristic fashion. Kach of these 

 cells may be called a "unit of life," but such artificially 

 grown living cells develop differently from those growing 

 in the body. The body as a whole needs all its highly 

 diversified cells for its functioning, as well as its non-cellular 

 material, such as the blood fluid. 



The cell is nothing more than one of countless other 

 structures frequently occurring in plants or animals. It 



