38 THE LIVING WORLD. 



organized condition. At the present time, at least, all 

 organic life depends upon the action of chlorophyll. 

 But in the experiments upon spontaneous generation 

 it has only been claimed that such organisms as bac- 

 teria and infusoria could arise spontaneously ; and 

 these organisms containing no chlorophyll have no 

 power to live upon the inorganic world. Our ex- 

 perimenters have found it necessary to supply them 

 with an abundance of organic food. Such organisms 

 certainly could not have been the first ones to appear 

 upon the earth, since they would be capable of exist- 

 ing only so long as organic food was supplied to them. 

 Indeed, if we could imagine the ocean filled with 

 albuminous food before any life appeared, and then 

 assume that these organisms could arise spontane- 

 ously, we should be no nearer to a permanent origin 

 of life than we were before. The only result would 

 be a rapid multiplication of these bacteria until the 

 ocean was filled with them ; the food would be con- 

 sumed, and then all would die of starvation, since 

 they would be unable to make food for themselves 

 out of the inorganic world as green plants can do. 

 The first living things must have been able to make 

 use of the inorganic world, and plainly, so long as 

 experiments deal only with chlorophylless organisms 

 arising in organic solutions, they have no direct rela- 

 tion to the question of the primary origin of life. 



Should we then place the origin of life in the same 

 category of insolvable mysteries as the origin of the 

 universe in general? Looking at the universe in the 

 most extreme mechanical manner it is impossible to 

 think of it without some original creative power. 



