Biology 675 



compound ; and there can be little doubt that it is only a question 

 of time until synthetic proteins can be made out of lifeless material 

 in the laboratory. 



There is thus no measurable scientific criterion by which we 

 can distinguish living from lifeless matter. The kinds of matter 

 are the same ; the ways they work their energy transformations 

 are the same; it is only their arrangement that is different. 

 Living matter is a particular and very elaborate arrangement 

 of ordinary matter. If this at first sight seems startling, we may 

 remind ourselves that it is only the arrangement of the same 

 twenty-six letters that distinguishes, say, Hamlet's soliloquy, or 

 Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, from a page of advertisements or a 

 Limerick. 



Of the origin of life we have, in the nature of things, as yet 

 no definite knowledge; but everything points towards this con- 

 clusion that during the gradual cooling down of this planet a 

 state of affairs arose which inevitably led to the production, in that 

 cosmic laboratory, of molecules which were alive in that they had 

 the power of reproducing themselves and reacting to stimuli, and 

 gave rise to the living things that we see to-day; in other words, 

 that there has not only been an evolution of all living things from 

 one common ancestor, but of all life from not-life. 



Can Mind Arise from Lifeless Matter? 



But, it will be immediately objected, what about mind? Man 

 and the higher animals possess mind: can we suppose that that 

 too has arisen from lifeless matter? It may very well be that we 

 can if we somewhat enlarge our ordinary view of the nature of 

 matter. It is now a commonplace of psychology that self -con- 

 sciousness is not the only, but simply the highest, development of 

 mind. Below it are various grades of mental being, leading 

 through the types of consciousness that young children seem to 



