THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



qu'inspirent ces sentiments si naturellement etemels 

 que Ton eprouve au chevet de I'enfant dont on voit 

 s'echapper le dernier souffle. A ce moment supreme, il 

 y a quelque chose au fond de I'ame qui nous dit que 

 le monde pourrait bien ne pas etre un pur ensemble 

 de phenomenes propres a un equilibre mecanique sorti 

 de chaos des elements par le simple effet du jeu 

 graduel des forces de la matiere." 



The biologist has put an equally heavy burden on 

 chemistry for, by the very nature of his methods, the 

 chemist must deal with lifeless material. He can ana- 

 lyse the substance of many bodies and he can often 

 synthesize a given product from its elements, but his 

 laboratory methods are not those fitted to deal with 

 the living cell or living organism. When it was found 

 that the elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 

 nitrogen, were the elements essential to the physical 

 substance of living bodies, their importance was em- 

 phasized by the name of organic chemistry. The im- 

 pression was then given that chemists were studying 

 life, whereas they were merely studying inorganic 

 compounds which were also used by living cells to 

 build the physical structure of the body. The chem- 

 ist has analysed many of the products of life. He may 

 know the composition of muscles and bones, but he 

 cannot make a muscle or bone that has the properties 

 of the living bone or muscle. He has made synthetic 

 urea, but he does it by an entirely different process 

 from the organism. It was an ingenious thing to do, as 



C 272 3 



'8' 



