'CHAPTER V 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



A TIME existed when there was no life 

 upon this earth. All scientists , fully 

 agree upon this fact. The intense heat 

 of the glowing planet in its first stages would have 

 rendered life impossible. How then did the 

 earliest organisms come into being? Mere in- 

 organic matter cannot have been the cause, for 

 spontaneous generation is now scientifically re- 

 jected. Science can enlighten us no further. 



Philosophy now enters on the scene and tells 

 us that since no cause of life existed upon this 

 earth we must look for one from without. The 

 explanation that the first cell of life was wafted 

 to us from some meteoric body, hurling along 

 its path through space, is no solution, since it 

 merely transfers the difficulty from the planetary 

 earth to the roving meteor. That body, too, had 

 passed through the same primordial stages. Yet 

 a cause there must have been, and this can there- 

 fore be looked for only from without this world, 

 in the sense that it was not identical with it, as 

 pantheism or Monism postulate. 



This cause, again, must of necessity have been 



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