Vice-President's Address. 289 



of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, 

 is a serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, 

 therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have 

 any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life 

 have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. 

 But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if 

 it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically 

 recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth 

 was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which 

 it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, 

 I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living 

 protoplasm from not living matter. I should expect to see 

 it appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like 

 existing fungi, with the power of determining the formation 

 of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium car- 

 bonates, oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phos- 

 phates, and water, without the aid of light " (" Collected 

 Essays," vol. viii. p. 256). 



But whatever be the views held as to the origin of life, all 

 are agreed that its first appearance on the earth was in a very 

 simple garb. Even on Lord Kelvin's hypothesis, the first 

 organisms could hardly be more specialised than the simple 

 cell. On the other hand, according to Professor Huxley, 

 cells would be the result of physico-chemical causes operat- 

 ing for long ages. They were even then advanced organisms 

 compared to molecules and protoplasm, and had already 

 mounted the first rung in the ladder of evolution. When 

 life reached this stage, we can readily conceive that its 

 transmission ever afterwards would be more readily effected 

 by reproduction than by the slow process of physico-chemical 

 action, so that in a short time the latter would be discon- 

 tinued. Cells propagate so rapidly and in such abundance, 

 that even then there would be a struggle for the available 

 food. Two or more cells would combine, and finding ad- 

 vantage in aggregation, the process would be perpetuated. 

 Thus was initiated the method of construction and elabora- 

 tion of compound organisms, which has culminated in our 

 day in the infinite variety of plants and animals now in- 

 habiting the globe. If you ask me how these combinations 



