184 ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE 



Much patient work may be required before 

 the exact constituents in the just proportions 

 are experimentally found out, as well as the 

 proper conditions of temperature and exposure 

 to light or other form of radiant energy, 

 to produce more complex organic bodies, but 

 it is evident that we are here face to face 

 with a practical experimental problem, and 

 not confronted with the impossible, or doomed 

 to indulge only in philosophical speculation 

 without being able to test our results. 



The problem we are attacking now is that 

 of how organic matter arose endowed with 

 its own peculiar energy-forms in a world 

 where there was no previous trace — not merely 

 of living matter — but of dead organic matter. 

 Such a lifeless world it is barely possible for 

 us as inhabitants of this green earth covered 

 with teeming energetic life to realizesor pos- 

 tulate to ourselves. 



Yet, in this lifeless inorganic world some- 

 where about the time when life, on account 

 of temperature conditions, first became pos- 

 sible, living creatures promptly (in the geo- 

 logical sense) became present, as the record 

 of the older sedimentary rocks teaches us 

 to-day. 



The degree of chemical complexity capable 

 of existing in the materials found on the 



