44 THE NATURE OF MATTER 



While biology was thus narrowing the issue with regard 

 to the origin of life on its side, chemistry was advancing to 

 meet it from the other side. Let me illustrate the matter 

 by a personal experience. Ten years ago I was the pro- 

 fessor of philosophy in a Catholic (monastic) seminary at 

 London, and it fell within my province to deal with this 

 problem. According to the most recent works put at my 

 disposal works written by learned Jesuits and Dominicans, 

 who still lead a large part of the Catholic world the solu- 

 tion was very simple. Not only could the scientist not 

 produce living things in the laboratory, but he could not 

 even produce dead organic substances. There are a number 

 of substances formed by living organisms indigo, alcohol, 

 uric acid, formic acid, lactic acid, etc. that are not other- 

 wise found in nature. I dutifully taught my clerical pupils, 

 ten years ago, that these organic substances baffled the 

 artificial synthesis of the chemist. The living matter itself 

 was, therefore, immeasurably beyond his reach, and clearly 

 due to an immaterial principle. I know to-day that every 

 one of the organic substances I enumerated was being 

 actually produced in laboratories not many miles away from 

 my college. Such is the irony of the Index Expurgatorius. 



But within the last five years an even more important 

 revolution has taken place in the science of inorganic nature. 

 The atom has yielded at last to analysis, and our eighty 

 chemical elements are in a fair way to be dissolved in a 

 homogeneous ocean of electricity or ether. Whether the 

 ether is the long-sought materia prima of the universe or 

 not, we are well within sight of that golden dream of science- 



