Organisms and Their Origin 131 



not suggest what is to come out of them any more 

 than an egg suggests a bird. 



Fortuitousness. — The general trend of evolution- 

 ary thinking and speculation inclines us to enter- 

 tain the belief that the living may have emerged 

 from the not-living in ages long since past. If so, 

 we may be sure that it did not emerge by chance, 

 but was as rigorously predetermined as the origin 

 of the solar system from a swarm of meteorites. 

 Lord Kelvin made himself responsible for the 

 statement, that while "fortuitous concourse of 

 atoms" is not an inappropriate description of the 

 formation of a crystal, it is utterly absurd in re- 

 spect to the coming into existence, or the growth, 

 or the continuation, of the molecular combinations 

 presented in the bodies of living things.^ One 

 agrees with the latter part of the statement, but one 

 finds it difficult to entertain the first. What does 

 a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" mean, unless 

 simply a concourse whose antecedent conditions 

 are unknown to us? It cannot mean a chaotic 

 state of things, if it gives rise to one of the most 

 beautiful of cosmic units — a crystal. 



In Conclusion. — If we see any good reason for 



* Which, he went on to say, compel us to conclude that 

 there is scientific reason for believing in the existence of a 

 creative and directive power. See Professor Ray Lankes- 

 ter's Letter to the Times, May 17, 1903, and his " King- 

 dom of Man," 1907, p. 62. 



