THE ORIGIN OF LIFE — ARMSTEONG. 529 



He appears to deprecate discussion of the problem, judging from 

 the concluding sentence of his letter: 



Far be it from any man of science to affirm that any given set of phenomena is not 

 a fit subject of inqniiy and that there is any limit to what may be revealed in answer 

 to systematic and well-directed investigation. In the present instance, however, it 

 appears to me that this is not a field for the chemist nor one in which chemistry is 

 likely to afford any assistance whatever. 



I agree with Sir William Tilden that Prof. Schafer's address "leaves 

 us exactly where we were" and that the "earlier part of the discourse 

 leaves open the question as to a criterion by which living may be 

 distinguished from nonliving matter." But I can not accept his 

 statement that "we have at present, therefore, no clear idea as to 

 what life is, and therefore no clear road open to the study of the con- 

 ditions under which it originated." 



Like Prof. Schafer, I do not find myself in the least helped b}- the 

 idea that life has origmated elsewhere; by adopting such a con- 

 clusion we only shift the difficulty a stage farther back. I agree, too, 

 with Prof. Mmchm in thmking that if life had reached us from other 

 worlds it would have found our earth unprepared to receive it and 

 would have been starved out of existence; this question of food 

 supply has not been taken into consideration by the advocates of the 

 hypothesis. If there be life elsewhere, on other worlds than ours, 

 the probability is that it more or less resembles life as we know it. 

 To judge from spectroscopic evidence, the materials of which our 

 world consists are those which constitute the cosmos. There is but 

 one element in which the potency of life can be said to exist — the 

 element carbon; the complexities and variations which are met with 

 in animate material are only possible apparently in a material of 

 which carbon is the essential constituent. Carbon stands alone 

 among tlie elements. It is the only one known to us whoso atoms 

 hang together in large numbers and can be arranged in a great 

 variety of ])atterns. The i)eculiarities of animate matter may cer- 

 tainly be said to be in large measure determined ])y the presence of 

 carbon, though nitrogen and oxygen, of couree, play an all-important 

 part. Our ])eculiarities may well jH'ove to be traceable ultimately to 

 those of the elements of wliich we are built — mdeed it can not well 

 be otherwise — yet the difference must be vast between elementary 

 material and living material. It is waste of time, I believe, to pay 

 much attention to the argument from analogy; indeed I foel that 

 Prof. Schafer relied too much on analogy in the earlier ])art of his 

 address. 



As Dr. Ilaldane points out, "Tjiviiig organisms are distinguished 

 from everything else that we at present know by the fact that they 

 maintain and reproduce themselves with their cliaracleristic struc- 

 ture and activities. Nothing resembhng this phenomenon is at 



