ORGANIC CHEMISTRY 



461 



and the lowly organism takes the form of an apparently structure- 

 less but ever moving mass of jelly. 1 If this is to be thought of 

 as the primal form in which life resided " in the beginning," how 

 did it receive the inspiration which differentiates it from a 

 minute drop of white of egg or gelatinous silica or any similar 

 mass of colloid ? 



Present views seem to be divided between two opposite camps. 

 On the one hand are found those who cling to the idea that life 

 is a directive influence distinct from any ordinary physical forces, 

 taken either singly or together. On the other hand are the 

 advocates of the view that all the operations of living beings are 

 the result of physical and chemical processes going on in the 

 organism itself or in response to forces acting on it from the 

 outside. 



The adherents of the former view are frequently referred to 

 by those who profess the opposite opinion as " vitalists " and the 

 doctrine as " vitalism " with a tone which seems to imply that 

 such an idea is obsolete. The vitalists do not attempt to 

 explain what life is, but like the rest they are eager to account 

 for the existence of living beings in this world of ours, and to do 

 so must choose between the hypothesis of a special creation and 



1 I cannot refrain from quoting here the following humorous verses by a 

 young poetess and student of philosophy, Constance Nad en, who, after a 

 brilliant career in the early days of the University of Birmingham, died on 

 29th December, 1889, at the early age of 31 years. 



We were a soft Amoeba 



In ages past and gone, 

 Ere you were Queen of Sheba 



And I King Solomon. 



Unorganed, undivided, 

 We lived in happy sloth, 



And all that you did I did, 

 One dinner nourished both : 



Till you incurred the odium 

 Of fission and divorce 



A severed pseudopodium 

 You strayed your lonely course. 



When next we met together 



Our cycles to fulfil, 

 Each was a bag of leather, 



With stomach and with gill. 



But our Ascidian morals 



Recalled that old mischance, 



And we avoided quarrels 

 By separate maintenance. 



Long ages passed our wishes 

 Were fetterless and free, 



For we were jolly fishes 

 A-swimming in the sea. 



We roamed by groves of coral, 

 We watched the youngsters play, 



The memory and the moral 

 Had vanished quite away. 



Next each became a reptile, 

 With fangs to sting and slay : 



No wiser ever crept, I'll 

 Assert^eny who may. 



But now, disdaining trammels 

 Of scale and limbless coil, 



Through every grade of mammals 

 We passed with upward toil. 



Till anthropoid and wary 



Appeared the parent ape, 

 And soon we grew less hairy, 



And soon began to drape. 



So from that soft Amoeba 



In ages past and gone, 

 You've grown the Queen of Sheba, 



And I, King Solomon." 



(From Solomon Redivivus, 1886, "Evolu- 

 tional Erotics," in the volume entitled A 

 Modern Apostle, Kegan Paul, Trench and 

 Co., 1887.) 



