THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 97 



Herbert Spencer says ', c warranting the belief that 

 though these multitudinous isomeric forms of protein 

 will not unite directly with one another, yet they admit 

 of being linked together with other elements with 

 which they combine. And it is very significant that 

 there are habitually present two other elements, sulphur 

 and phosphorus, which have quite special powers of 

 holding together many equivalents the one being pent- 

 atomic and the other hexatomic. So that it is a legi- 

 timate supposition (justified by analogy), that an atom 

 of sulphur may be a bond of union among half-a-dozen 

 isomeric forms of protein ; and similarly with phos- 

 phorus.' 



These then are the materials, or such as these, from 

 the nascent action and interaction of which and their 

 environment there may have sprung up those modes 

 of change and growth which may gradually win for 

 themselves the title of c vital ' phenomena, and which, 

 becoming more pronounced, may at last suffice to 

 stamp the most infinitesimal and variable forms which 

 present them as Living Things. 



But, for these changes and actions to take place, the 

 continued action of Forces upon the matter is needed 

 even though this be of the most -unstable description, 

 and therefore the most prone to assume new molecular 

 re-arrangements. There must also be causes of change 

 acting from without. Have we not s?en that the phe- 

 nomena taking place in living things, all essentially 

 1 Loc. cit. p. 486. 

 H 



