ORIGINATION OF SELF-GENERATING MATTER 281 



living matter which might perpetuate itself and evolve into differen- 

 tiated forms will long remain one of the most diflEicult feats which 

 confronts the experimenter. The tests and criticisms which have 

 been applied to the results of the few essays that have been made 

 for the production of bodies which would be self-maintenant in a 

 suitable medium, have been, for the most part, misdirected. Thus 

 in the consideration of the hitherto unsuccessful efforts to produce 

 bodies simulating some of the properties of self-generating matter, 

 tests for the physical and chemical properties of protoplasm as well 

 as for phenomena of the cell have been applied, regardless of the 

 fact that the cell probably stands removed by a million years of 

 evolution from the simple living material which first took shape, 

 and represents, in fact, simply a successful form of organism and by 

 no means the only possible morphological organization. 



Such misuse of criteria has doubtless operated to curb research 

 and discourage experimentation, and while it may have seemed 

 soundly conservative for Kelvin to say: 



But let not youthful minds be dazzled by the imaginings of the daily news- 

 papers that because Berthelot and others have thus made foodstuffs they can 

 make living things, or that there is any prospect of a process being found in 



any laboratory for making a living thing There is an absolute distinction 



between crystals and cells. Nothing approaching to the cell of a Uving creature 

 has ever yet been made,' 



yet the actual accomplishment of self-generating matter is, as sug- 

 gested above, a theoretical possibility in the laboratory. The pro- 

 vision of a proper nutritive environment would present greater 

 difficulties than the construction of a thermo-catalyzer capable of 

 sustaining itself in a proper medium. 



After growth and decay, the next most important property of 

 living matter is that of irritability, of impressibility, and of accommo- 

 dation to environment. The basic substance of protoplasm endured 

 because of a capacity for withstanding the current range of tem- 

 perature and insolation, and this endurance was made possible by 

 fairly automatic adjustments, one of the simplest of which is encoun- 

 tered in recognizable form in living plants today in the decrease of 

 water content, consequent upon the cooling of protoplasm. Few 



I Nature, XXXI, 13, 1904. 



