30 ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE 



admitted that all experimentation directed 

 towards production or destruction of either 

 matter or energy must prove in vain. The 

 only reason for setting such limitations to 

 the knowable is that under the conditions of 

 action which at present we know, production 

 or destruction of matter or energy does not 

 occur. If such a position had been accepted 

 in regard to earlier scientific theories, we 

 should not now know many important things 

 which have been added to the common store of 

 knowledge. The acceptance of a completed act 

 of creation would have precluded, for example, 

 our present knowledge of organic evolution, 

 and the belief in fixed quantities of energy 

 and matter equally involves a non-progressive 

 act of creation at some fixed time in the past. 

 The placing of the creative act in the more 

 remote past, or in a fictitious eternity even, 

 does not solve the problem. 



The doctrine is precisely similar to the bio- 

 logical doctrine usually expressed by the 

 phrase of Harvey, " Omne vivum e vivo " 

 (all life from life), which closes the door to all 

 attempts to solve our special quest in this book 

 by the dictum that life only can come from 

 life, that it never can arise afresh, and so its 

 first origin lies shrouded in the unknowable 

 past. 



