82 On the Origin of Life. By Lionel S. Beale. 
living into the living might he reasonably accounted for. One great 
authority, dissatisfied with every suggestion, and being evidently 
convinced that no physical explanation of the origin of life upon 
our globe would ever be discovered, despairingly submits to us the 
proposition that life did not begin here at all, and that our earth 
was first peopled by the offspring of germs brought to us upon a 
fragment broken off from some distant orb that teemed vtitli life. 
Whether even the simplest living forms would have survived after 
such a ride through space unfortunately had not been determined 
by experiment, so the idea of our fauna and flora being derived from 
those of another world found little favour, and probably all who 
have considered the subject would now agree that it is probable 
that life-forms originated upon our globe, though there might be 
great difference of opinion concerning the precise mode of their 
origin. 
“Evolution” is now supposed to solve the difficulty of life form- 
ation ; but this term has had at least two meanings assigned to it. 
By some it has been restricted to the living world, while others have 
given to the term “ evolution ” a much wider signification, and have 
maintained that it should include not only the evolution of living 
forms from pre-existing living forms, but the formation of the living 
out of the non-living. There is, it is scarcely necessary to point 
out, the widest possible difference between these two doctrines ; for 
while the one teaches that all living forms came direct from living 
matter without accounting for the origin of life at all, the other is 
a tenet of the fiery-cloud philosophy which teaches as a cardinal 
point that the evolution of life is but one of the great series of 
changes in which the evolution of the cosmos is comprised. But 
surely such an idea may, for the present, be regarded as a conjec- 
ture so extravagant as to be unworthy of serious consideration. 
Facts are wanting, and the arguments advanced in favour of the 
hypothesis are such as cannot have much weight, since it has been 
deemed necessary to bring forward, in their support, utterances of 
a prophetic character. 
If, then, evolution is restricted to the living world, the origin 
of the first living thing will be still unaccounted for. The presence 
of a very simple living form seems to have been assumed ; but 
whether that being came of itself from the non-living, or arose in 
consequence of some prior changes, or was formed by an act of 
creative interference, is not suggested by the terms of the particular 
form of the hypothesis under consideration. Neither is the precise 
nature of the first living substance indicated, and we are even left 
in doubt whether one or two or many forms of living matter came 
into existence at the first formation of life. 
Now with reference to the origin of the first living matter, 
several not improbable suggestions present themselves to the mind, 
