Organisms and Their Origin 121 



We are in the habit of comparing what man can 

 do in the way of evolving domesticated animals 

 and cultivated plants with what we believe Nature 

 has done in the distant past. Why, then, should 

 we not argue from what the intelligent chemist can 

 do in the way of evolving carbon-compounds to 

 what Nature may have done before there was any- 

 thing animate? There is this difference, among 

 others, in the two cases, that in the former we can 

 actually observe the operation of natural selection 

 which in Nature takes the place of the breeder, 

 while we are at a loss to suggest what, in Na- 

 ture's as yet very hypothetical laboratory of 

 chemical synthesis, could take the place of the 

 directive chemist. 



Thus Professor F. R. Japp, following Pasteur, 

 pointed out in a memorable British Association 

 address that natural organic compounds are 

 "optically active" (a characteristic property which 

 cannot be here discussed), that artificially prepared 

 organic compounds are primarily "optically in- 

 active," that by a selective process the intelligent 

 operator can obtain the former from the latter, 

 but ... it is difficult to conceive of any mechan- 

 ism in nature which could effect this. "No 

 fortuitous concourse of atoms, even with all eter- 

 nity for them to clash and combine in, could com- 

 pass this feat of the formation of the first optically 

 active organic compound." "The chance syn- 



