OUR APPROACH 7 



but it is probable that physical conditions in the early history of 

 the earth were far different from conditions today and that life 

 may have originated from inorganic matter in the past. This 

 concept has never been expressed better than by T. H. Huxley 

 in his essay on "Spontaneous Generation" : 



"And, looking back through the tremendous vista of the past, 

 I find no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I 

 am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as to 

 the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of 

 the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To 

 say, therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have 

 any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life have 

 originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But expecta- 

 tion is permissible where belief is not; and, if it were given me 

 to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the 

 still more remote period when the earth was passing through 

 physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again 

 than a man can recall his infancy, I should expect to be a witness 

 of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter. 

 I should expect to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, 

 endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of determining the 

 formation of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium 

 carbonates, oxalates, and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phos- 

 phates, and water, without the aid of light. That is the expec- 

 tation to which analogical reason leads me; but I beg you once 

 more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything 

 but an act of philosophical faith." * 



Protoplasm Is Life 



Future research may demonstrate the possibility of originat- 

 ing living protoplasm from matter that is not living, but there 

 is no evidence whatsoever that it does so arise under conditions 

 existing today. Step by step during the last three hundred years 

 the aphorism omne vivum ex vivo (all life comes from life), 

 which originated in the seventeenth century, has been extended to 

 all types of organisms. The last step, taken in 1855 to 1885 

 by Pasteur, showed that the smallest known organisms, the 



* T. H. Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews. Edition 1883, page 366, 

 D. Appleton and Company. 



