THE SYNTHESIS OF LIVING BEINGS. 53 



most of the complex compounds which appear exclusively re- 

 served for the living organism. These compounds are not merely 

 products of splitting or oxidation, wastes of life, but are also 

 compounds like those which constitute the superior products of 

 life. We should recognize that these products, that this albumen 

 obtained by synthesis, while having the same elementary com- 

 position as living albumen and the same physical and chemical 

 characteristics, is nevertheless distinguished from it by a very 

 important point : it does not exhibit the characteristic phenomena 

 of life. It is not capable of performing the part of a leaven, and 

 has not the instability of living albumen. We have for the 

 moment established only one thing : that the chemist is capable 

 of creating, by direct synthesis, the most characteristic compounds 

 and the highest products of life. 



Will chemistry ever be able to produce living albumen ca- 

 pable of actively performing the part of a leaven, and endowed 

 with sufficient instability to go through all the modifications that 

 permit the combustions, splittings, and demolitions that lead to 

 disassimilation and excretion ? It seems to me that we are per- 

 mitted to hope for it. But within what limits will this power 

 of the chemist be included ? Will he ever be able to make a 

 living being ? Will he succeed in making even a simple cell, a 

 grain of starch, a muscular fiber, or any shapely and differen- 

 tiated element ? In order to answer these questions, we must 

 dissipate some confusion and present all the elements of the 

 problem. 



To ask the chemist to make directly a differentiated being, or 

 even a muscular fiber, a nervous cell, a grain of starch, is to ask 

 him to do what Nature herself has probably never been able to do, 

 and what it is probably impossible to realize. Can one in good 

 faith exact so much ? Is it not enough to ask the chemist to be 

 as powerful as Nature ? The question is then reduced to — Will 

 the chemist be able to do what Nature has done ? Let us see what 

 Nature has done, looking from the evolutionist's point of view. 



If the living form of matter was ever born by virtue of the 

 action of natural forces, the event must have taken place in a 

 medium the conditions of which differed from the existing con- 

 ditions of our globe ; for such formation of natural matter does 

 not seem to be realized among us. Under these special conditions 

 of the medium, living matter must have appeared in the most 

 simple, the most rudimentary condition, for beginnings are always 

 humble and little differentiated. We can conceive nothing of 

 this kind more simple than droplets, more or less minute, of a 

 substance comparable with albumen or protoplasm — that is, a 

 substance fermentable and unstable in sufficient degrees for a cur- 

 rent of vital exchanges to be established within it. The droplets 



