FOUR QUESTIONS REGARDING LIFE 3 



cosmos. Without being either a mechanist or a materialist, one 

 may hold the opinion that Hfe is a continuation of the evolu- 

 tionary process rather than an exception to the rest of the 

 cosmos, because both mechanism and materialism are words 

 borrowed from other sources which do not in the least con- 

 vey the impression which the activities of the cosmos make 

 upon us. This impression is that of limitless and ordered 

 energy. 



Our second great question relates to the exact significance 

 of the term evolutioii when applied to lifeless and to living 

 matter. Is the development of life evolutionary in the same 

 sense or is it essentially different from that of the inorganic 

 world? Let us critically examine this question by comparing 

 the evolution of life with what is known of the evolution of 

 the stars, of the formation of the earth; in brief, of the com- 

 parative anatomy and physiology of the universe as developed 

 by the physicist Rutherford,' by the astronomer Campbell,- 

 and by the geologist Chamberlin.'^ Or we may compare the 

 evolution of life to the possible evolution of the chemical ele- 

 ments themselves from simpler forms, in passing from primitive 

 nebuliE through the hotter stars to the planets, as first pointed 

 out by Clarke* in 1873, ^^^ by Lockyer in 1874. 



In such comparisons do we find a correspondence between 

 the orderly development of the stars and the orderly develop- 

 ment of life? Do we observe in life a continuation of processes 

 which in general present a picture of the universe slowly cool- 

 ing off and running down? Or, after hundreds of millions of 

 years of more or less monotonous repetition of purely physico- 

 chemical and mechanical reaction, do we find that electrons, 



1 Rutherford, Sir Ernest, 1915. = Campbell, William Wallace, 1915. 



sChamberlin, Thomas Chrowder, 1916. ^ Clarke, F. W., 1873, P- 323- 



