KDomledge & Seieotlfle flems 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Conducted by MAJOR B. BADEN-POWELL and E. S. GREW, M.A. 



Vol. II. No. 5. 



[new series.] 



MAY, 1905. 



Entered at -i 

 Stationers' Hall.J 



SIXPENCE. 



CONTENTS.— See Page VIl. 



Modern Cosmogonies. 



XIII. — Life qls the Ovitcome.^ 



By Miss Agnes M. Clerke, Hon. Mcmbsr R.A.S. 



The making of world's, we are assured, was not pur- 

 poseless ; and its most obvious purpose to our minds is 

 the preparation of suitable abodes for organic life. No 

 other seems of comparable importance ; no other, indeed, 

 comes within the full grasp of our apprehensive intelli- 

 gence. Its limitations, however, must not be forgotten. 

 The human standpoint is not the only one from which 

 the sum of things may be surveyed ; and although we be 

 unable to quit it, we can still admit that the view obtain- 

 able from it is probably not all-embracing. We only, 

 then, know with certainty that the end which appears to 

 us supreme has, in one case, been successfully attained ; 

 how far it was sought to be compassed elsewhere must 

 always remain a matter of speculation. 



On our own globe, the presence of life is none the less 

 mysterious for being profuse and familiar. W'e can 

 trace the strange history of its slow unfolding ; but the 

 secret of its initiation baffles our utmost scrutiny. The 

 cooled rind of a once molten globe serves as the stage 

 for the drama ; beneath it, primeval heat still reigns. 

 Temperature rises steadily with descent into the interior 

 of the earth ; at a depth of about two miles, it must reach 

 the boiling-point of water at the sea-level. This tem- 

 perature, which is absolutely prohibitive of vitality, was 

 formerly, beyond question, that of the surface. At some 

 long-past epoch, accordingly, our future oceans hung 

 suspended as a prodigious envelope of vapour above a 

 hot crust of slag and lava ; our teeming planet lay 

 barren ; it harboured no promise, no potency, no visible 

 possibility of life. 



So it should have remained had the law of continuity 

 been rigidly enforced ; but there came a time for a new 

 beginning, and a new beginning was made. A momen- 

 tous alteration took place ; inert nature was quickened ; 

 what had been sterile became all at once fruitful ; an 

 immeasurable gulf was bridged, and movement was 

 started along an endless line of advance. That the 

 advance was set on foot and directed by an intelligent 

 Will is the only inference derivable from a rational survey 

 of the known facts. 



* Continwd from February. 



Life can be studied in its manifestations, not in itself. 

 Attempts to define it have served only to show our in- 

 ability to " lift the painted veil." W^e can, however, see 

 that its presence is attended by characteristic effects, 

 brought about in harmony with the laws or inorganic 

 nature, although not in blind submission to them. Their 

 operation is somehow restrained, and appears to be 

 subtly though securely guided towards determinate ends 

 prescribed by the vital needs of each animal or plant. 

 This modifying principle unmistakably regulates the 

 economy of every living organism ; the cessation of its 

 activity means death. 



Science has made no progress towards solving the 

 enigma of vitality. Its evasiveness becomes, on the 

 contrary, more apparent as enquiry is rendered more 

 e.xact. Under a laxer discipline of thought the contrast 

 between life and death seemed less glaring. It was 

 easily taken for granted that creeping things were 

 engendered by corruption, aid being invoked if required 

 from the virtus codestis of the eighth sphere. Thus, the 

 birth of mice from damp earth was, in the ninth century, 

 held to be signified by the word mus (= hu-mus);* and 

 \an Helmont, at the height of the revival of learning, 

 published without misgiving a recipe for the creation of 

 the same animals, f Yet there was already better know- 

 ledge to be had for the asking ; and Francesco Redi, in 

 1668, crystallised Harvey's opinion in the celebrated 

 maxim, " Omne vivum ex vivn." Its truth is incontro- 

 vertible. Challenged and tested again and again, it has 

 as often been vindicated, and may now be said to stand 

 outside the range of debate. " That life is an antecedent 

 to life," Lord Kelvin declared in 1871, " seems to me as 

 sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation."! 



But the succession is not easy to start within the term^ 

 of a strictly uniformitarian convention. The expedient 

 is tempting, if scarcely satisfactory, of demanding from 

 the past what we dare not claim from the present. Two 

 and a half millenniums ago, it was already in vogue. 

 Herodotus dismisses a genealogical embarrassment with 

 the remark ; yhoiTo S'av Tvar iv ru iiaKsu x^'"''^t which may b-; 

 freely translated, " In the long run of time, anything 

 may happen." Conditions, we are apt to think, 

 may have been more elastic long ago. The proven 

 impossibility of to-day becomes vaguely thinkable seen 

 through the mist of uncounted yesterdays. " If it were 

 given to me," Professor Huxley said," " to look beyond 

 the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more 

 remote period when the earth was passing through 

 physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see 



* Hewitt, Problems of the Age, p. 105. 



t Pasteur, Annales dc Chimie el de Physique, t. XLIV., p. G, 1S62. 



; Popular Lectures and Addresses, Vol. II., p. igS. 



H Report Brit. Ass., 1870, p. 84. 



