86 WHAT IS LIFE 



points, the chemist can only say that at present no 

 such problem lies within his province. Protoplasm, 

 with which the simplest manifestations of life are 

 associated, is not a compound, but a structure 

 built up of compounds. The chemist may success- 

 fully synthesise any of its component compounds, 

 but he has no more reason to look forward to the 

 synthetic production of the structure than to 

 imagine that the synthesis of gallic acid leads to 

 the artificial production of gallnuts." 



And a more recent utterance of the same kind 

 has been made by Professor B. Moore 1 when 

 speaking of " the products formed interstitially 

 within the cell. Most of these," he says, " are so 

 complex that they have not yet been synthesised 

 by the organic chemist; but even of those that 

 have been synthesised, it may be remarked that all 

 proof is wanting that the syntheses have been 

 carried out in identically the same fashion and by 

 the employment of the same forms of energy in the 

 case of the cell as in the chemist's laboratory. The 

 conditions in the cell are widely different, and at 

 the temperature of the cell and with such chemical 

 materials as are at hand in the cell no such organic 

 syntheses have been artificially carried out by the 

 forms of energy extraneous to living tissue." 



1 Op. tit., p. 10. 



