90 LEOTUEES ON BIOLOGY 



They do no longer participate in the life-motion of the whole, 

 but have become the first inorganic matter. 



" Only when these combinations in the course of time became 

 rigid on the earth-surface i.e., died and became extinct com- 

 pounds were formed of the elements that so far had remained 

 gaseous and liquid, which become more and more similar to the 

 protoplasm which is to-day the basis of everything that lives. 

 With the fall in the temperature and the diminution of dissocia- 

 tions it was necessary that there were formed still more complex 

 compounds, chemical substitutions, still more compact bodies, 

 still more complicated interacting motions of parts becoming 

 more intimately correlated, and only these primary forms of 

 the plant and animal kingdom, made possible by progressing 

 differentiation, were able to persist. We do not say (continues 

 Preyer) that protoplasm existed as such since the beginning 

 of the formation of the earth, nor that without a beginning it 

 immigrated as such from a point outside in the cosmic space 

 to the cooled earth, much less that it originated from inorganic 

 matter on the planet, as the theory of spontaneous generation 

 would have us believe ; but we contend that the beginningless 

 motion in the universe is life, that protoplasm necessarily 

 remained after the bodies which we now call inorganic had been 

 excreted on its cooling surface by the more intensive life-activity 

 of the red-hot planet. The heavy metals, once organic elements, 

 were unable to melt again or to re-enter into the circulation 

 from which they had been excreted. They are the symptoms 

 of rigor mortis of prehistoric, gigantic, red-hot organisms whose 

 breath was glowing iron-vapour, whose blood molten metal, and 

 whose food probably meteorites." 



Do we not seem to see the over-heated dreams of an exorcist 

 rather than the calm arguments of a serious scientific mind? 

 The conception of the ancients that life proceeded from the fire 

 is here once more revived. All that moves, lives. Life is said 

 to be without beginning, but finds its end in death. For that the 

 state of life in which our earth, the sun, and the planets are at 

 the present time is only temporary, and that the bodies of the 

 universe hasten with inexorable necessity towards a state of 

 complete torpidity such as the moon has shown for thousands of 

 years, even Preyer could not doubt. Life is eternal, it is true, 



