THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



though living cannot now be produced from inani 

 mate matter, yet in the distant past the conditions 

 must have been so different that life was natural 

 ly evolved upon the earth by the continued play 

 of continuous, unexceptionable, unintermitted, un 

 aided law. &quot; Supposing a planet carved from the 

 sun, and revolving round the sun at a distance 

 equal to that of our earth, would one of the con 

 sequences of its refrigeration be the development 

 of organic forms? I lean to the affirmative.&quot; So 

 said Tyndall, and so say we all or nearly all- 

 to-day. What were the past conditions of the evo 

 lution of life cannot be guessed. It cannot have 

 been that a high temperature was needed, for the 

 temperature must have been below that of the 

 boiling-point of water. The (supposed) difference 

 between that distant period say a hundred mill 

 ion years ago and the present cannot have been 

 due to any present deficiency of suitable complex 

 chemical stuffs to-day. On the contrary, the earth 

 is filled with complex compounds, proteids, carbo 

 hydrates, and so forth, apparently ready to develop 

 into living matter; yet (it is said) they do not; 

 while living matter, containing all these bodies, 

 was evolved in the past, when none of them was 

 already there to aid in the process! It is a hard 

 belief. 



Thirdly, there is the belief of Lord Kelvin, who 

 is not a biologist, but is assuredly the greatest 

 living man of science, that no explanation of the 

 origin of life is conceivable save that which refers 



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