28 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 
time, since he did not reject the possibility of its 
occurrence in our own day. Granting ‘that the 
formation of organic matter and the evolution of life 
in its lowest forms may go on under existing 
cosmical conditions,’ as he says, he believes it 
“more likely that the formation of such matter and 
such forms took place at a time when the heat of 
the earth’s surface was falling through those ranges 
of temperature at which the higher organic com- 
pounds are unstable.” 
Professor Huxley’s opinions on the subject of 
Archebiosis (spoken of by him as ‘ Abiogenesis ”) 
were very similar to those of Herbert Spencer, with 
the exception that he seemed more strongly opposed 
to the notion of its occurrence at the present day, 
and it is to this aspect of the question that I would 
now direct the reader’s attention. 
Why should such leaders in evolution promulgate 
a notion which seems to involve a quite arbitrary 
infringement of the Uniformity of Nature? 
Both Huxley and Herbert Spencer believed that 
living matter originally came into being by the 
operation of natural causes—that is, by the unhindered 
play of natural affinities operating in and upon matter 
which had already acquired a certain degree of 
molecular complexity. They believed that the 
simpler kinds of mineral and crystalline matter con- 
tinue to come into being as they have ever done ; nay, 
more, they believed that living matter, originally 
initiated by the operation of natural causes, continues 
to “grow” both in animal and in vegetable forms, 
