CHAPTER III 

 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 1 



LORANDE LOSS WOODRUFF 



PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN YALE COLLEGE 



Protoplasm. The phenomena to which we apply the term 

 life have as their physical basis an inconceivably complex 

 physicochemical organization called protoplasm. The con- 

 ception of a common basis of all vital activities that all living 

 nature is one was the culmination of a long series of re- 

 searches during the first half of the nineteenth century, and 

 forms the corner-stone of modern biology. At the present 

 time biology is the study of the properties of protoplasm, 

 because to it, in the last analysis, the multifarious activities of 

 animals and plants must be referred. 



Since we are only familiar with life as a manifestation of 

 protoplasmic activity, the problem of the origin of life natu- 

 rally resolves itself into the problem of the origin of proto- 

 plasm, and it is obviously impossible to discuss the origin of 

 living matter without an insight into its composition and 

 organization. The crude attempts of the alchemists of the 

 Middle Ages to produce artificially in crucible or retort an 

 homunculus complete, though they had not the slightest con- 

 ception of its composition, affords, in contrast with the 

 present trend of intensive analysis of protoplasm, a vivid illus- 

 tration of the progress of scientific method in the interim. 

 Obviously, analysis must precede synthesis even though the 

 latter may never be achieved. 



1 This lecture is published essentially as it was presented to a general uni- 

 versity audience except that some of the more important references to the 

 literature of the subject have been inserted as footnotes. 



