THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 59' 



creative act, by one or other of which we must 

 account for the origin of life, spontaneous genera- 

 tion must be entirely rejected. Nothing therefore 

 remains but the creative act. Dogmatic state- 

 ments about the materialistic evolution of life, 

 found in certain writers, are consequently purely 

 gratuitous assertions. The explanations given 

 are empty platitudes wrapped up in high-sound- 

 ing but meaningless scientific phraseology. 



In 1892 Schaaffhausen announced that a com- 

 bination of water, air and various minerals had 

 produced a Protococcus, under the influence of 

 light and heat, and that this had turned into the 

 Protococcus viridis. But Schaaffhausen never 

 produced a living cell to prove his theory. The 

 ill-starred Bathybius Haeckelii and the same au- 

 thor's Autoplasson have never yet emerged from 

 a test tube, and never will. Maggi discovered 

 that the primary life-substance was Glia. 6 But all 

 these imaginary original life-forms belong to ex- 

 actly the same class as Goethe's homunculus, the 

 ungrateful little imp who leaped from the sci- 

 entists' test-tube only to scoff at his enraptured 

 maker. They are inventions that belong to the 

 order of Grimm's "Fairy Tales," but must not 

 be taken seriously as scientific discoveries. 

 Schwann gave us his cytoblastema and Robin con- 

 ceived his blastem, and we are just as wise as be- 

 fore, though we smile a gentle smile when Herbert 



"Wasmann, "Modern Biology," pp. 193-206. 



