Life in the Universe 1 6 1 



present potentially all the time. 



Judging by the uniformity of Nature as we see it here, life must 

 have appeared in many places in the Universe, wherever the neces- 

 sary conditions — water, light and simple compounds — exist. We 

 must think of living things, at various levels of complexity, as part 

 and parcel of the Universe of light, heat and material atoms. We ought 

 not to think of living organizations merely as complex mechanisms; 

 they are more than this. They exist in their own right, as emergent 

 creations of the 'elan vital' or 'life force', call it what you will. Men- 

 tality, whatever it is — we know very little at present — also cannot be 

 regarded as an outsider, but as implicit from the start, waiting to be 

 realized. We can see the Universe, comprising both matter and life, 

 as one process; though in extent, duration and complexity it is beyond 

 our comprehension. We must believe one thing about it, although we 

 cannot prove it, but it is a reasonable conclusion from what we do 

 know, that in some sense the end was implied in the beginning. 



A few years ago it was fashionable to think of life as a remote 

 and improbable accident in a life-less Universe. Life was thought of, as 

 Jeans said,^ as 'an unimportant by-product' in 'a Universe which was 

 clearly not designed for life, and which, to all appearances, is either 

 totally indifferent or definitely hostile to it'. It seemed, he said, 

 'incredible that the Universe can have been designed primarily to pro- 

 duce life like our own; had it been so, surely we might have expected 

 to find a better proportion between the magnitude of the mechanism 

 and the amount of the product'. 



However, although the size of the mechanism is clearly fantastic, 

 we do not know the amount of the 'product'. It could be argued just 

 as easily that the colossal dimensions of the Universe ensure that the 

 conditions (energy, stability, environment) required for the develop- 

 ment of life will occur in many places. To argue that life is an 

 improbable accident is no more cogent than to suggest that the 

 Universe itself is improbable and unlikely. Perhaps it is, but it does 

 exist and we can only accept it. In the same way it is only reasonable, 

 although our knowledge is so Hmited, to accept life, and also 

 mentality, as something which is normal and even inevitable. 



It is just as likely that the Universe was designed primarily to 

 produce life like our own, as the reverse. That men do exist, with all 

 their extraordinary abilities and potentialities, is the primary fact of 

 human life and it is better to put that and all that is implied by it in 

 the forefront of our picture of the world, than to suggest that it is all 

 an improbable accident. 



^ The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge University Press). 



