Organisms aiid Their Origin 119 



present carbon-compounds, probably gave rise 

 to cellular life as we know it to-day. 



By allowing quantities of radium salt to act on 

 sterilized bouillon, Mr. J. Butler Burke obtained 

 transient little bodies which he called " radiobes,^' 

 which seemed to him on the border-line between 

 the animate and the inanimate. Mr. Burke did 

 not claim, however, to have effected "spontaneous 

 generation." To expect to make a full-blown 

 bacillus at the present day, he says, would not be 

 less absurd than to try to manufacture a man. 

 He admitted that his ''radiobes," which are solu- 

 ble in water, are ''altogether outside the beaten 

 track of living things," though he maintained that 

 they have n — 1 of the ii properties of the living or- 

 ganism. "That little more and how much it is. 

 That little less and what worlds away." It should 

 be remembered, too, that this investigator postu- 

 lates a potential vitality, and indeed spirituality, in 

 all matter. Matter, he says, is ultimately mind- 

 stuff, and the atoms are nothing more than ideas. 



Difficulty of the Problem. — It must be admitted 

 that, in spite of these and other concrete sugges- 

 tions, we are still far from being able to imagine 

 how living matter could arise from not-living 

 matter. But we must remember that many things 

 happen which we do not understand. Two sub- 

 stances combine to form a new substance with 

 quite different properties, which are doubtless due 



