THE ORIGIN OF LIVING MATTER 523 



duce organic substances from inorganic without the aid of Hving 

 matter. Matter in the colloidal state is usually a very efl&cient 

 catalytic agent. It will be recalled that platinum, ordinarily an 

 inert metal, becomes a highly efficient catalyst when in the form 

 of colloidal, or spongy, platinum. Reactions occur in the pres- 

 ence of such colloidal catalysts because of the tremendous surface 

 that the finely divided material presents. On this surface, i.e., 

 at colloidal interfaces, the adsorption of water and carbon dioxide 

 will take place and result in the synthesis of organic matter 

 through bringing inorganic substances into molecular relations 

 with each other. In the ancient world, the colloidal catalyst 

 may have been volcanic dust falUng into rapidly drying lakes, or 

 it may have been the soil. 



The theory that life originated on land rather than in the sea, 

 as heretofore taught, is now rather generally accepted by geolo- 

 gists. The controversy is an old one, having existed among the 

 ancients, who were divided into three schools — those who taught 

 that life originated in fire, those who maintained that it originated 

 in water, and those who believed that it began in soil. Fire was 

 long regarded as alive, for it possesses such qualities of life as the 

 need for air without which it perishes. Goethe believed in 

 water as the seat of the origin of life, for he says: 



Alles ist aus dem Wasser 



entsprungen, 

 Alles wird durch das Wasser 



erhalten. 



Faust. 



The modern geologist, however, favors the land as the place 

 where life began. Chamberlain first advanced the idea that life 

 originated in the ground because the environment there favors 

 concentration — the gathering together and building up of sub- 

 stances, rather than a scattering and dilution of them as in the 

 ocean. If life actually originated on land, it must soon have 

 migrated into shallow waters along the seashore, for it is unques- 

 tionably there that the development of invertebrates into the 

 various higher divisions of animal life occurred. Practically all 

 of the earliest paleozoic fossils are of marine organisms. From 

 the sea, certain strains of living creatures then migrated to the 

 land. Many of their offspring later sent expeditionary forces 



