ORIGIN OF THE INDIVIDUAL 211 



science and so beyond the present discussion or to AN- 

 OTHER PLANET from whence it was transferred through 

 space to the Earth which removes it to a " conveniently 

 inaccessible place where its solution is impossible" -there 

 remains but one alternative: life arose through the gradual 

 evolutionary complexification of matter when, ages ago, 

 Earth conditions became favorable. Such living matter must 

 have been relatively simple compared with protoplasm as 

 we know it today; so simple, in fact, that we would not 

 recognize it as such, because protoplasm as we see it even in 

 the simplest organisms has had a long evolutionary history. 

 Of course it is not, a priori, impossible that such simple life 

 is even at the present time arising spontaneously under spe- 

 cial environmental conditions, perhaps in the ocean depths, 

 but is unable to come to fruition in competition with existing 

 protoplasm of ancient pedigree and evolutionary specializa- 

 tion. 



However that may be, during the past quarter century 

 some biologists have now and then thought they were on the 

 verge of artificially creating life in the test tube, only to leave 

 the problem, like the alchemists of old, with more respect for 

 the complexities of its organization and the " enormous gap 

 which separates even the simplest forms of life from the in- 

 organic world." And so we may more profitably turn to a 

 consideration of the present-day manifestations of life in the 

 reproduction of organisms, and dismiss the insolvable prob- 

 lem of the origin of life on the Earth with the conservative 

 statement penned over forty years ago by Huxley: 



" Looking back through the prodigious vista of the past, I 

 find no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I 

 am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as 

 to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific 

 sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong 



