THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 41 



eral outline of the thoughts of most biologists to-day 

 who attempt to formulate any conception of the 

 primal origin of life in accordance with natural law. 



Assuming provisionally that life is simply a prop- 

 erty of the complex composition of protoplasm, we 

 can go on to ask ourselves how this complex com- 

 position could ever have been reached. Now certain 

 facts of geology assist us much in this matter. 

 During the early history of the globe the tempera- 

 ture was so high that few, if any, chemical com- 

 pounds could exist. As the earth cooled by radiation, 

 the elements hitherto kept apart began to come to- 

 gether in chemical union. All during the long 

 process of cooling conditions existed which have 

 never been matched since. Even after the tempera- 

 ture had reached a degree which admitted the 

 existence of organic compounds, every circumstance 

 was utterly different from what is found to-day. 

 Different temperature, different relations of mois- 

 ture, different electrical conditions, an atmosphere 

 containing vastly more carbonic acid and oxygen 

 than ours ; all these factors, and thousands of others 

 of which it is needless to speculate, combined to 

 make the conditions of chemical union widely differ- 

 ent from any that can now occur. Under these 

 circumstances it is plain that, with the universal 

 chemical laws, chemical processes would be carried 

 on of which we can know nothing, but which would 

 be very different from any taking place in the world 

 at present, or which can be simulated in the labora- 

 tory by the chemist or biologist. In these early 

 times we thus see the possibility of production of 



