172 From Matter to Man. 



The chief difficulty in comprehending life and 

 unearthing its purely materialistic origin has arisen 

 hitherto from human unwillingness, cowardice, or 

 incapacity to trace consequents from antecedents. 

 Men seemed to think that natural puzzles were not 

 simple but difficult problems, which could only be 

 solved by extraordinary means, by preternatural 

 agencies and preternatural gifts. 



The great orthodox argument is, " life from life, and 

 organic substance from organic substance." Thus it 

 is asserted that a cabbage can only spring from a 

 cabbage, and a plant from its seed. This is true of 

 the cabbage at the present time under present con- 

 ditions ; but at one time far back in the planet's 

 history, a cabbage or its prototype is admitted to 

 have been evolved from something neither a cabbage 

 nor a plant — viz., inorganic elements. Hence, if 

 nature fails to grow cabbages fortuitously now from 

 inorganic matter, it is not through her inability to do 

 so, but simply because the land and water are already 

 overcrowded with the germs of other plants and 

 animals. Further, as new conditions and environ- 

 ments in the world must happen more often than old 

 ones, it is more likely that, in any vacancy, the germs 

 of new plants should be evolved rather than that old 

 ones should be reproduced. 



Again, "life only from life " is fallacious when it is 

 inevitable that all organic substance must be renewed 

 from and revivified by inorganic substance. The 

 living things of to-day were yesterday and preceding 



