62 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



He dares not even call it belief,&quot; he cautiously 

 adds, because this implies &quot;strong foundations/* 

 such as he admits are absolutely wanting for his 

 conclusions. In brief, neither Darwin, nor Hux 

 ley, nor Haeckel, nor any other scientist has of 

 fered, or ever will be able to offer any explana 

 tion regarding the origin of life. Should this 

 last statement seem too sweeping in its generality, 

 it will be well to note that it embodies what may 

 almost be called the unanimous consent of the 

 great modern scientists upon this matter. After 

 presenting an exposition of the most &quot;scientific&quot; 

 theories upon the origin of life, including the 

 tentative opinions of men like Troland, Allen, 

 Moore and Osborn, Professor Woodruff offers 

 the following summary: 



All will undoubtedly admit that we are at the present time 

 utterly unable to give an adequate explanation of the funda 

 mental life processes in terms of physics and chemistry. 

 Whether we shall ever be able to do so is unprofitable to 

 speculate about, though certainly the twentieth century finds 

 relatively few representative scientists who really expect a 

 scientific explanation of life ever to be attained or who expect 

 that protoplasm will ever be artificially synthesized.&quot; 



The very existence and nature of life, in other 

 words, remain a mystery to science. Much less 

 can it ever solve the problem of the origin of 

 life, unless it admits the only solution that it is 

 rationally possible to offer at this point, and that 



&quot; &quot;The Evolution of the Earth and Its Inhabitants,&quot; edited by 

 R. S. Lull, p. 95. 



