68 IN THE BEGINNING 



behaviour of nitric acid in the production of concentrated 

 sulphuric acid," says Verworn) ; the breaking up of the group 

 of molecules would mean an expansion beyond the slender 

 cohering power of the group as such. The detached mole- 

 cules would cling together by their individual adhesive 

 power, and grow again by their power of imbibition. In 

 the course of time the small cohering groups of molecules 

 that we may call biogens would cluster together to form 

 larger groups (still less than the five-thousandth of an inch 

 in diameter), just as we know the cells came afterwards to 

 cling together to form the multicellular animal. In that 

 case we should have our first microbes. Each biogen 

 would live its own life, as each cell does in the simpler 

 multicellular body; but there would be an advantage in 

 cohering an advantage quite parallel to the cohering of 

 social groups. 



This is not a theory of the origin of life, but a provisional 

 reply to those who profess a complete inability to conceive 

 the natural evolution of plasm. It is speculative from 

 beginning to end, but is entirely based on known facts. It 

 starts from a fact, and it merely assumes that the methods 

 we afterwards find at work in the evolution of life were, in 

 proportionate form, at work from the first. The same 

 methods or facts are familiar to the astronomer in cosmic 

 development, and they are familiar to the sociologist as well 

 as the biologist. The evolution of civilisation out of the 

 chaos of the Neanderthal race is singularly parallel to it. 

 The chemist finds the same struggle for life in parts of his 

 world that the biologist does in organic nature. The 



