72 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



be somewhat analogous to the part they probably played in 

 the original rise of the cell. The basic electrical structure 

 of matter would thus be paralleled by the more complex 

 electrical origin of the cell. Reproduction of the most 

 primitive forms takes place in a fluid medium, and all 

 protoplasm still has a fluid jelly-like consistency. It is 

 therefore probable that the most 'primitive forms of proto- 

 plasm might have arisen under favourable conditions of 

 sunlight and warmth when the warm water still contained 

 much of the crust in solution or dispersed in small particles 

 in colloidal form, and thus presented conditions favourable 

 for the selective formation of complex substances, such as 

 the predecessors of the present forms of protoplasm. Recent 

 advances in bio-chemistry have led to the isolation and 

 discovery in the animal body of very complex substances 

 (such as glutathione) whose external surfaces absorb free 

 Oxygen and whose interior undergoes the opposite change 

 of setting free this Oxygen and absorbing Hydrogen for the 

 building up of higher structures. Thus a continual chemical 

 process is set going which is at the same time an electri- 

 cal current from without inwards, transmitting the electrical 

 energy of sunlight contained in the Oxygen of the air to 

 the interior cell substances, where the Oxygen is deprived 

 of its energy and set free, and where with this energy 

 complex compounds are built up which again store the 

 energy required for the nutrition and other functions of the 

 living organism. The chemical electrical system which 

 forms the fundamental mechanism of life in the last resort 

 simply uses the energy of sunlight, stored in the free Oxygen 

 of the air, for building from it the body of life; and there is 

 thus the closest connection between sunlight and life- 

 structures. In that connection, without a doubt, the origin 

 of life must be sought. The cell structure having once been 

 evolved from pre-cell structure, probably by way of pro- 

 longed trial and error or " natural selection " extending over 

 long periods of time, its multiplication or reproduction would 

 take place through the part that electrical tension would 

 play. Thus the complex unstable electrical structure or 



