ENTR' ACTE 



The curtain falls on the array of artificial creatures and 

 working mechanisms through which we have tried to under- 

 stand the essence of life. We have met an odd-looking 

 world that has taught us new truths. In outline at least, 

 we can visualize how life came about : On the hot and sultry 

 early earth, loaded with lifeless organic matter, violent thun- 

 derstorms raged. Unspeakably brilliant and powerful light- 

 nings played in the heavens, loosing frightful forces upon 

 the carbon containing gases of the atmosphere, bringing 

 into existence numerous compounds of carbon. After mil- 

 lions of years, self-regenerating enzymes were formed. The 

 amount of these substances constantly and inevitably in- 

 creased, inevitably because their peculiar chemical action 

 led to the marvel of transformation of other organic ma- 

 terial into the enzyme itself. Thus one enzyme produced 

 another, filling the oceans with material more and more 

 closely resembling the substance of living plants and 

 animals. 



Slowly the organizing forces of crystallization and of 

 osmosis acted upon this material : living organisms appeared 

 and kept on developing to a bewildering multitude, of 

 incomprehensible complexity. We stand aghast at this 

 development; we turn from it to look into the abyss of our 

 ignorance. Countless other organizing forces of nature 

 must have been at work that we do not understand; we 

 only feebly understand those we have explored. 



But let us rejoice that we have made a start at the un- 

 raveling of some of them. Which of the ambitious little 

 artificial creatures that we have studied reveal most to us 

 of the essence of life phenomena? Let us question them all. 



First, the crystalline growths. They do their utmost, 

 and reproduce cells with a nucleus, spirals, fibers, nerve 

 dendrites. We wonder how they do it without organic 



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