HORIZON LINES 



and bringing together of the then primordial ele- 

 ments of water, nitrates, and carbon dioxide, "which 

 so far as we know had never been in combined action 

 before." Was their coming together a blind, for- 

 tuitous affair? Osborn assumes that these elements 

 were gradually bound by a new form of mutual 

 attraction "out of which arose a new form of unity 

 in the cosmos, an organic unity or organism. It 

 was an application of energy new to the cosmos. In 

 fact it was life." "When the earth had in the course 

 of its physical evolution become adapted as the 

 abode of life, living substances came into being." 

 By their own independent action, or by what? 



In trying to account for happenings on the earth's 

 surface, we follow the chain of cause and effect. 

 But when we try to explain origins, we are dealing 

 with a chain which has only one end. 



Picted, a Swiss scientist, concluded that because 

 all chemical action of the kind which goes on in 

 living things is annihilated at one hundred degrees 

 below zero Centigrade, therefore chemical action 

 and life are one. But chemical action is as old as 

 the earth. Is life as old? 



II. THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING WORLDS 



I fancy I am not alone in having difficulty in 

 uniting the two worlds — the living and the non- 

 living — and in seeing them under the same law. 

 In the one I see something like mind and pur- 



205 



