THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 6l 



terialism. "Looking back," he said, "through the 

 prodigious vista of the past, / find no record of 

 the commencement of life, and therefore I am 

 devoid of any means of forming a definite con- 

 clusion as to the conditions of its appearance." 9 

 Science, on the admission he is forced to make 

 in common with every scientist, has no data, no 

 evidence whatsoever to explain the origin of life. 

 Why then the bold assertion, made in the name 

 of science, of the truth of materialistic evolution 

 and the equally bold denial of a Creator? Huxley 

 asked of the world neither more nor less than, in 

 his own express words, an act of "philosophic 

 faith." On this alone, as he admitted, his own 

 opinion was grounded, and not on any scientific 

 facts, no matter how tenuous. Plainly he wrote : 



If it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically 

 recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth 

 was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which it 

 can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, I 

 should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living proto- 

 plasm from not-living matter. I should expect to see it ap- 

 pear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing 

 fungi, with the power of determining the formation of new 

 protoplasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxa- 

 lates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, 

 without the aid of light. That is the expectation to which 

 analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to 

 recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but 

 an act of philosophical faith 



9 "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis." Presidential Address deliv- 

 ered before the Brit. Assoc. Adv. Science, 1870. 



10 Ibid. 



