ioo The Science of Life. 



veloping where the conditions were favourable. Helm- 

 holtz also asked whether the question as to the origin of 

 life was not as ultimate as the question as to the origin 

 of matter, and lent his authority to the hypothesis that 

 germs of life might have reached the earth from other 

 spheres. But the best-known name in this connection 

 is that of Lord Kelvin, who did not see any serious im- 

 probability against the theory that life was borne to the 

 earth by meteorites. This would, so to speak, shift the 

 responsibility of the problem off the earth, leaving the 

 solution elsewhere. 



The bold conception suggested by Richter and Helm- 

 holtz was further elaborated by Prof. W. Preyer. Far 

 from supposing that the inorganic might have given rise 

 to the organic, he asked whether the dead was not as 

 probably the product of the living. And everyone knows 

 that many rocks could not have been as they are apart 

 from life. Even in the times when the earth was a fire- 

 ball there may have been, Preyer supposed, molecular 

 combinations which bore in their inter-relations the 

 secret of life, of life very different from that in any form 

 which we know, but still of life. It is doubtful, how- 

 ever, whether this hypothetical extension of the concep- 

 tion of vitality can serve any useful purpose. 



The opinion towards which the majority seem to swing 

 round is that which was expressed with great clearness 

 by Haeckel in 1866, that analogy points to an erstwhile 

 origin of living matter from not-living matter. The 

 botanist C. von Nageli, the zoologist Ray Lankester, 

 the physiologist Pfliiger, may be mentioned as promi- 

 nent workers who have more or less fully accepted 

 HaeckePs position. 



We cannot close this chapter without recalling the 

 now familiar fact that the discussion is not a merely 

 theoretical one, but has been unusually rich in practical 

 results. It led on to discoveries in the preservation 

 of food and the improvement of food-products, to an 

 entirely new view of parasites, to the use of antiseptics, 

 and to the cure of many diseases. 



