256 Tue Microscope. 
unknown, which changes not-living into the living, and thus 
makes all nature an unbroken sequence and a continuous 
whole? That this is a great question, a question involving 
large issues, will be seen by all -who have familiarized them- 
selves with the thought and fact of our times. But we must 
treat it purely as a question of science; it is not a question of 
how life first appeared upon the earth, it is only a question of 
whether there is any natural force now at work building not- 
living matter into living forms. Nor have we to determine 
whether or not, in the indefinite past, the not-vital elements on 
the earth, at some point of their highest activity, were endowed 
with or became possessed of the properties of life. On that 
subject there is no doubt. The elements that compose proto- 
plasm—the physical basis of all living things—are the familiar 
elements of the world without life. The mystery of life is not 
in the elements that compose the vital stuff. We know them 
all; we know their properties. The mystery consists solely in 
how these elements can be so combined as to acquire the tran- 
scendant properties of life. Moreover, to the investigator it is 
not aquestion of by what means matter dead—without the 
shimmer of a vital quality—became either slowly or suddenly 
possessed of the properties of life. HEnough for us to know that 
whatever the power that wrought the change, that power was 
competent, as the issue proves. But that which calm and pa- 
tient research has to determine is, whether matter demonstra- 
bly not living can be, without the aid of organisms already liv- 
ing, endowed with the properties of life. 
Judged of hastily and apart from the facts, it may appear 
to some minds that an origin of life from not-life, by sheer 
physical law, would be a great philosophical gain, an indefin- 
itely strong support of the doctrine of evolution. If this were 
so, and indeed so far as it is believed to be so, it would speak 
volumes in favor of the spirit of science pervading our age. For 
although the vast majority of biologists in Europe and Amer- 
ica accept the doctrine of evolution, they are almost unanimous 
in their refusal to accept, as in any sense competent, the reputed 
evidence of ‘spontaneous generation,’ which demonstrates at 
least, that what is sought by our leaders in science is not the 
mere support of hypotheses, cherished though they may be, but 
