THE OKIGIN OF LIFE 93 



able to survive the red heat to which meteorites are exposed 

 when entering the atmosphere of the earth there is no funda- 

 mental objection to the assumption that primitive germs of life 

 may reach us in this manner uninjured by the heat. Some 

 investigators, endowed with a particularly rich imagination, 

 were even able to recognize in thin slabs of meteorites the 

 most diverse organisms, such as corals, star-fishes, &c., which 

 looked as much like their terrestrial cousins as one egg looks 

 like another, except that their dimensions were considerably 

 smaller; but this pretty support soon crumbled away when 

 more accurate investigation showed that these alleged animals 

 and plants were nothing more nor less than crystalline forma- 

 tions which anyone may at any time produce by artificial means. 

 Other objections of a fundamental nature were soon raised 

 against the cosmozoic theory from the most different directions. 

 Thus it was said that it provided no solution at all of the problem 

 but merely removed the question of the origin of life from our 

 earth to some other star, thus leaving the riddle itself unaffected. 

 This objection, however, cannot be regarded as sound, for there 

 is no cogent reason, assuming the possibility of transmission of 

 living germs from one star to another, why life should not be 

 eternal, like inorganic matter. But as space is conceived as 

 infinite and as the number of astral bodies is infinite, the assump- 

 tion that life has come to this earth from another star which in its 

 turn received it from yet another star, and so on, does not remove 

 the question to another fixed period of time, but to eternity. And 

 with that the question of the origin of life becomes a question of 

 transcendental philosophy ; it is now as incomprehensible as the 

 origin of the world or the conception of matter, for it is placed 

 beyond the boundaries of the possibilities of our perception. 



There is another reason which compels us to decline this 

 hypothesis. Though it might be possible, according to Helm- 

 holtz, for the germs hidden in the interior of the meteorites to 

 pass through the atmosphere of the earth without losing their 

 vitality or, if they adhered to the surface of the meteorites, to be 

 wafted down by the air when the fragments entered the earth- 

 atmosphere and thus descend slowly and safely to the earth- 

 surface, it is yet almost inconceivable that any organism should 

 be able to endure the intense cold and absolute desiccation to 



