30 LIFE IN THE PRIMITIVE OCEAN 



and Its Inhabitants (191 8). In a chapter on "The 

 Origin of Life" Professor Woodruff gives all the 

 theories. You need a good knowledge of chemistry to 

 understand them fully, and I need only say here that 

 both chemists and biologists agree that a natural 

 chemical evolution could produce the first living 

 things. But you must be careful not to suppose that 

 even the lowest living things in nature to-day — say, 

 the simplest bacteria — were directly evolved out of 

 inorganic matter. A very long evolution, with 

 thousands of phases, would be required. It would 

 take ages. First the stuff of which living things are 

 made, protoplasm, would have to be formed by a long 

 series of chemical changes and combinations. Then 

 this stuff would have to break up into the distinct 

 units which we call "cells"; for each of the simplest 

 animals and plants is a single cell. 



When I spoke of "two chief lines of speculation," 

 I meant that you may suppose that the natural 

 development of life — what used to be called "spon- 

 taneous generation" — is going on now in nature, or 

 that it only occurred under the very special conditions 

 of the early earth. Both these views are held by 

 distinguished biologists. Professor Benjamin Moore 

 has an excellent little work on the former line — that 

 life is still being evolved in nature — in the "Home 

 University Library." It is called The Origin and 

 Nature of Life (1912). He and other eminent au- 

 thorities (such as Professor Thomson, of Aberdeen) 



