INTRODUCTION 



even when it is resolved only into compounds means, in the 

 present state of our knowledge of electrons, an insuperable 

 obstacle to an analysis of life into electrons. This would 

 still be true were we suddenly to discover a peculiar com- 

 pound which we could define as the compound of the state 

 — or event — of being alive. As matter, a living thing may 

 be analyzed with the means utilized in the resolution of 

 non-living matter; but the moment we end the living state 

 we render impossible any direct analysis of life. Clearly: if 

 life exists only in a super-compound-state, contingent upon 

 aggregation, analysis of its compounds being useless, 

 analysis of molecular and atomic structure becomes equally 

 futile. A quantitative biology that does not recognize this 

 fact is doomed to failure. 



Without needlessly elaborating, I do nevertheless wish 

 to make myself understood. It would be shamefully unfair 

 and ungrateful of any biologist even to appear to discount 

 the researches in chemistry upon which modern biology so 

 largely rests. The greatest biological investigator of our 

 time, Pasteur, w^as a chemist. His work indicates the 

 extent to which chemistry may carry biology. The work 

 of Emil Fischer, of Albrecht Kossel and of a host of other 

 chemists has fructified and fortified biology. Still the fact 

 remains: the exact analysis of the compounds which com- 

 prise a living thing is only analysis of the compounds and 

 by destroying life, such analysis fails to reveal the secret, 

 the goal of all biology, the answer to the question, what is 

 life ? 



Here one may interpose a question, an inquiry concerning 



the postulated life-molecule. '^ In earlier times one thought 

 of life as reposing in a peculiar molecule, as the biogen- 



molecule. Chemical researches have however so far failed 



to reveal the life-molecule. Instead they show that living 



^ See Hopkins, ig/2. See also, Minot, i8g6. 



5 



