319 



The experiments of Rosenthal, l ) who claimed to have hy- 

 drolyzed highly complicated carbohydrates in an oscillatory electro- 

 magnetic field, are not confirmed by later investigations, and may, 

 therefore, be passed over here. 



12. However, an indirect proof of the possibility, -- even of 

 the necessity, - - of such complete asymmetrical synthesis on earth, 

 has been given by the reasonings and by some experiments of 

 Byk 2 ). His suppositions are based on a number of facts which 

 were previously established by other investigators, and which, 

 when combined, seem to be adapted to prove the possibility of 

 such a one-sided formation of optically matter, as searched 

 for in the problem under consideration. He points out, that 

 a supposition as made in the discussion by Japp a.o., pre- 

 viously mentioned, can never explain the one-sidedness of natural 

 synthesis. Such a separation by mere chance, or by some acci- 

 dental cause such as whirl- winds, etc., of an optically active germ 

 from an externally-compensated mixture created by spontaneous 

 crystallisation, as it was supposed by some of the authors men- 

 tioned, would in the immeasurable periods of geological evolution, 

 even under the best conditions, only have led to an externally 

 compensated or a pseudo-racemic world, but never to the one- 

 sided material world we actually have. For it is no explanation, 

 and, therefore, not satisfactory to state the fact, that nature evidently 

 has found a way of avoiding the necessity to adapt the physiological 

 functions of the living organism to a double series of chemical pro- 

 cesses, both corresponding to one of the two possible antipodes of 

 the first optically active substance created in plants or animals. 3 ) 

 It may be that nature once made its choice between the two series 

 apparently by mere chance; and it may be considered as certain, 

 that, if this choice at that critical moment had been the reverse of 

 the actual one, the whole living world would now show the mirror- 

 image of the present. But this "making its choice" can only be con- 

 sidered an anthropomorphic expression of the fact that accidentally 

 there existed special asymmetric chemical and physical conditions at 

 that critical moment, which were not of equal significance for the 

 preservation of both antipodes present. And as long as the possi- 



1) J. Rosenthal, Sitzber. Akad. d. Wiss. Berlin, (1908), /, p. 20. 



2 ) A. Byk, Ber. d. d. Chem. Ges., 37, 4696, (1904); Zeits. f. phys. Chemie, 49, 

 641, (1905). 



3 ) W. J. Pope, Bull, de la Soc. Chim. Paris, (4), 25, 444 ; (1919). 



