THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



though living cannot now be produced from inani- 

 mate matter, yet in the distant past the conditions 

 must have been so different that life was natural- 

 ly evolved upon the earth by the continued play 

 of continuous, unexceptionable, unintermitted, un- 

 aided law. "Supposing a planet carved from the 

 sun, and revolving round the sun at a distance 

 equal to that of our earth, would one of the con- 

 sequences of its refrigeration be the development 

 of organic forms? I lean to the affirmative." So 

 said Tyndall, and so say we all or nearly all 

 to-day. What were the past conditions of the evo- 

 lution of life cannot be guessed. It cannot have 

 been that a high temperature was needed, for the 

 temperature must have been below that of the 

 boiling-point of water. The (supposed) difference 

 between that distant period say a hundred mill- 

 ion years ago and the present cannot have been 

 due to any present deficiency of suitable complex 

 chemical stuffs to-day. On the contrary, the earth 

 is rilled with complex compounds, proteids, carbo- 

 hydrates, and so forth, apparently ready to develop 

 into living matter; yet (it is said) they do not; 

 while living matter, containing all these bodies, 

 was evolved in the past, when none of them was 

 already there to aid in the process ! It is a hard 

 belief. 



Thirdly, there is the belief of Lord Kelvin, who 



is not a biologist, but is assuredly the greatest 



living man of science, that no explanation of the 



origin of life is conceivable save that which refers 



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