266 THE WORLD-ESTERGY 



consistent, make at least occasional confession that 

 there really are limits to his present actual knowledge; 

 though it is not so easy to see why he should feel 

 bound to assert as something already certainly known 

 that there are absolute barriers beyond which knowl- 

 edge can never go. It may be further remarked that 

 if agnosticism means simply that no human being is 

 at any given moment omniscient, doubtless all except 

 the insane are, have always been, and must ever be 

 agnostics. 



It is a curious fact, too, that agnosticism itself does 

 not prevent some of its votaries from taking up and 

 attempting to solve certain problems sometimes declared 

 to be insoluble. Among these is the problem of the 

 origin of life. And attempts in this direction have been 

 made in quite characteristic fashion; that 'is, by obser- 

 vation and ^ experiment. Serious, ingeniously planned, 

 and prolonged work has been performed in the labora- 

 tory with the hope of artificially producing, if not a 

 homunculus, at least a protogenes. 



Thus far, however, from all experimenters (except, 

 perhaps, one or two suspected of being more eager than 

 painstaking) there comes the somewhat disheartening 

 report that no really positive results have been attained. 

 And the reports are the more disheartening since organic 

 matter has been presupposed (that is, it has been actu- 

 ally present) in these very experiments. 



Not, indeed, that there have been no encouraging 

 signs. On the contrary, more and more complex com- 

 pounds have been built up, and these approach more 

 and more nearly to, not merely organic, but even to 

 really organized matter. 



