60 IN THE BEGINNING 



grouped into atoms, millions of atoms grouped into 

 molecule-systems of the utmost complexity, molecules 

 grouped into biogens, and biogens united in the little 

 globule of plasm we do not feel surprise that certain dis- 

 tinctive properties, that we call vital, make their appearance. 

 But where did the plasm come from ? Let me first point 

 out that we have not merely put back the problem a step. 

 The empirical law that guides us in explaining the contents 

 of the universe is the law of evolution. We have had so 

 uniform an experience of it that we now say even 

 theologians say that everything was evolved that could be 

 evolved. There are a few thinkers, like Sir Oliver Lodge, 

 called Vitalists, who hold, for one reason or other, that life 

 could not have been evolved from inorganic energy. We 

 have found that this objection has no substance whatever 

 as regards our primitive microbes. There is no feature in 

 their life that we can claim to be beyond the range of a 

 subtle synthesis of inorganic energies. Therefore the one 

 objection to evolution in their case disappears, and, on the 

 analogy of the whole of the other contents of the universe, 

 on one of the most powerful and broadest inductions of 

 science, we assume that they were evolved. 1 Evolution is 



1 A few readers may cling to the old idea that the earliest organisms 

 were created a notion left open by Darwin in his Origin of Species, 

 but afterwards entirely rejected by him. The assumption brings in a 

 new factor without the least rational justification, and makes the origin 

 of life for ever unintelligible because no one can pretend that creation 

 out of nothing is intelligible. It must be borne in mind that Sir Oliver 

 Lodge does not countenance this theory for a moment. He says 

 (p. 106) that its "absurdity" is "extreme." 



