126 The Bible of Nature 



and biology, a man like Professor Jacques Loeb, 

 is successful this year or next year in making, not 

 merely a corpuscle of proteid, but a little living 

 thing, by some ingenious synthesis. What then ? 

 {a) It is quite likely that the steps leading to 

 this hypothetical achievement might be as unlike 

 those which, on the hypothesis of abiogenesis, once 

 occurred in Nature's laboratory, as the artificial 

 synthesis of, say, oxalic acid is unlike what takes 

 place in the sorrel in the wood. (6) At present 

 we cannot assert that the laws of the movements 

 of organic corpuscles can be deduced from the 

 laws of motion of not-living corpuscles — continu- 

 ous as we may believe cosmic evolution to have 

 been — and the artificial production of a living 

 creature would not enable us to make this asser- 

 tion. What simplification of descriptive formulae 

 the future has in store for us no one can predict. 

 We may have to simplify the conceptual formulae 

 which we use in describing animate behavior, and 

 we may have to modify the conceptual formulae 

 which we use in describing inanimate sequences, 

 but at present the two sets of formulae remain dis- 

 tinct, and they would so remain even if a little liv- 

 ing creature were manufactured to-morrow, (c) If 

 we discovered a method of artificially producing 

 an organism, as Loeb has discovered a method 

 of inducing an Qgg to develop without fertilization, 

 it would render the hypothesis of abiogenesis more 



