22 THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 



import is involved. Speculation on the origin of life is 

 vitally connected with speculation on the nature of life ; and 

 this in turn is most intimately bound up with a large and 

 important religious controversy. If Lodge is right and 

 Haeckel wrong, the theologian has found a magnificent 

 ground in the real world for the reconstruction of his theory 

 of man. In this aspect the question is assuredly of the first 

 importance. We must speculate. We must examine care- 

 fully the whole available evidence, and see whether it lends 

 any colour to this remarkable theory of Sir Oliver Lodge's, 

 that life is an eternal, self-existing principle, and that our 

 individual life-principles (or souls) persist when the body 

 decays. In this respect the problem of the origin of life is 

 invested with an importance that must overrule the reluc- 

 tance of the specialist. Haeckel's positive speculations on 

 the actual mode of the origin of life are much simpler than 

 one would gather from Sir Oliver Lodge's high talk about 

 "extravagant pretensions." They are also expressly pro- 

 visional and temporary. It is Sir Oliver's dogmatic nega- 

 tion that calls for the closest attention. He denies that 

 life was evolved from inorganic energy, because it is not 

 inorganic energy or any synthesis or development of 

 inorganic energies. This would be a discovery of tremendous 

 and far-reaching importance, and we must see whether it is 

 justified by the facts of biological science, or whether it is 

 not an aerial structure framed in ignorance of a large and 

 essential part of them. 



Thus we get a definition of our problem in terms that 



