AND ITS INHABITANTS 95 



chemistry and physics could offer for the phenomena of irrita- 

 bility of living matter then prominently before the professional 

 biologist. The vitalists at that period abandoned almost 

 completely all attempts to explain life processes on a physico- 

 chemical basis and assumed that an all-controlling, unknown, 

 and unknowable, mystical, hyper-mechanical force was re- 

 sponsible for all living processes. It is apparent, of course, 

 that such an assumption in such a form is a negation of the 

 scientific method and at once removes the problem from the 

 realm of scientific investigation. No biologist at the present 

 day subscribes to vitalism in this form; some uphold vitalism 

 (if it must still be called vitalism) in its modern aspect, while 

 all will undoubtedly admit that we are at the present time 

 utterly unable to give an adequate explanation of the funda- 

 mental life processes in terms of physics and chemistry. 

 Whether we shall ever be able so to do is unprofitable to 

 speculate about, though certainly the twentieth century finds 

 relatively few representative scientists who really expect a 

 scientific explanation of life ever to be attained or who expect 

 that protoplasm will ever be artificially synthesized. But, 

 "In ultimate analysis everything is incomprehensible, anbl 

 the whole object of science is simply to reduce the fundamental 

 incomprehensibilities to the smallest possible number." 12 



Cosmozoa theory. The establishment of the fact that, so 

 far as we can determine, life does not arise except from 

 preexisting life at the present time, and the dawning realiza- 

 tion of the intrinsic and unique complexity of the architecture 

 of matter in the living state, which has thwarted the attempts 

 of alchemist and biochemist to synthesize even one of its chief 

 molecular aggregations, have led several scientists to suggest 

 and elaborate the hypothesis that life has never arisen de novo 

 on the earth but has been transported hither from elsewhere 

 in the universe. 



12 Huxley, T. H., Darwiniana. Collected essays, vol. 2, 1893, p. 165. 



