
ORGANIC EVOLUTION 21 
the past when the surface of the earth had become 
sufficiently cool; and such a process could only be 
regarded as a continuation and sequence of that 
related process of evolution which had previously 
been leading to the genesis of the various chemical 
elements and of those simple combinations among 
them, by which oxides, acids and other compounds 
are produced. 
All the combinations in question—whether of 
electrons, of atoms, or of molecules, and whether 
simple or complex—being the work of natural 
influences and natural affinities, it is only reasonable 
to suppose that the particular combinations giving 
rise to living matter, when the right time came, 
would have occurred in multitudinous regions over 
the earth’s surface, and would have recurred again 
and again as long as the conditions remained 
favourable. 
How these particular combinations were led up to 
—what were the actual steps of the process—no one 
can say, but that they mzs¢ have occurred no person 
possessing a fair amount of chemical and biological 
knowledge now doubts. And if this beginning of 
organic evolution is but a continuation and natural 
appendix to what had gone before; if, as astronomers 
tell us, there must be thousands of suns having orbs 
circling round them like our earth, and among these 
perhaps thousands in which the special conditions 
existing are very similar to those now existing, or 
that have existed, on our planet, we are fully entitled 
to believe that just as the simple chemical elements 
are ever coming into being in untold myriads of 
