64 IN THE BEGINNING 



attached to it. Its frame is an enormously intricate structure 

 of millions of electrons : its " spirit " may very well be the 

 synthesis of the inorganic energies of these electrons. 



There is no reason to-day why we should run desperately 

 to other planets or spirit-worlds for the explanation of life. 

 We cannot, of course, give a detailed account of a process 

 that took place a hundred million years ago, and left no 

 trace behind except the finished article. If one were 

 attempted, it would be, in the phrase of the picture dealer, 

 " highly speculative." Still, there does seem ground for a 

 few leading ideas that have a strong provisional interest. 



If the first living things were evolved, as we have good 

 logical and scientific ground for thinking, there was no 

 beginning of life at all. It is necessary to put it strongly, in 

 order to break down the conventional idea that a few floating 

 or crawling microbes appeared one fine day in the primitive 

 ocean. If even a simple thing like the Chroococcus had 

 suddenly appeared in this way, we should indeed have a 

 formidable problem to face. We have no right whatever to 

 say that the first living things were like the Chroococcus or 

 the Procytella. We have just as good a right to say that 

 they were a thousand times simpler than either. But are 

 these not the lowest living things in existence to-day ? We 

 do not even know that. A number of competent biologists 

 hold that they are not. I have described our microbe as 

 consisting of some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of 

 molecules of plasm. It is now generally thought in biology 

 that these molecules are first grouped into smaller clusters, 

 variously known as biogens, biophores, micellae, plastidules, 



