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CHAPTER VIII. 

 THE CONSERVATION OF LIFE. 



THE veil which covers the genesis of the first germs of life 

 on earth seems impenetrable. Wherever we may search we find 

 no answer to the question of the origin of life. On this subject 

 exists no accurate knowledge, and we must be content with 

 hypotheses and probabilities. Nor are we able to obtain informa- 

 tion about the nature and appearance of the first primitive 

 organisms. The runes of the earth's history engraven in 

 geological formations have mostly perished. The book of Nature 

 is defective and illegible, and the further we attempt to go back 

 the less clear, the more confused and strange the writings become, 

 the more pages are missing. Though palaeontologists have 

 achieved wonders in deciphering many of these mysterious signs 

 they have failed to answer the most important question of all. 



If we now, in spite of the knowledge that we move on 

 unstable, hypothetical ground, were to accept as true the doctrine 

 of spontaneous generation, how are we to conceive the first repre- 

 sentatives of the organic world ? Organisms generated from 

 inorganic matter could manifestly be but extremely primitive. 

 Whether they were little structureless lumps of albumin, as 

 Haeckel thinks, or vast masses of protoplasm that were as yet 

 unindividualized and covered large tracts of the primordial ocean- 

 bed we are unable to say, and all speculating after details will 

 be futile. However low and simple we may imagine the ances- 

 tors of the present animal and plant world to have been they 

 must have held in common with the present species two funda- 

 mental properties : metabolism, and the faculty of maintaining 

 the species by means of reproduction. That this latter ability 

 must be ascribed also to the problematic primordial organism is 

 proved by the different plant and animal species and by our own 



