AND ITS INHABITANTS 107 



by facts. One, however, cannot but admire the scientific 

 caution of Huxley when he said: 



"Looking back through the prodigious vista of the past, I 

 find no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I 

 am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as 

 to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific 

 sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong founda- 

 tions. To say, therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, 

 that I have any belief as to the mode in which existing forms of 

 life have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. 

 But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if it 

 were given to 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 appear 

 under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, 

 with the power of determining the formation of new proto- 

 plasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates 

 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." 21 



Thus since biologists are at the present time absolutely 

 unable, and probably will be for all time unable, to obtain 

 empirical evidence on any of the crucial questions relating to 

 the origin of life on the earth, their endeavors are and must 

 be directed chiefly toward an intensive analysis of life mani- 

 festations as exhibited in the physical basis of individual 



21 Huxley, T. H., Biogenesis and abiogenesis. Presidential address, Brit. 

 Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1870. Collected essays, vol. 8. 



