THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



since it does not solve, but postpones, the question of the 

 origin of organic life. If it is consistently worked out, 

 it leads to pure cosmological dualism. 



Another and very different theory of the eternity of 

 life has been elaborated by Theodor Fechner (1873) and 

 Wilhelm Preyer (1880). Both these scientists extend 

 the idea of life to the whole cosmos, and reject the dis- 

 tinction that is usually drawn between the organic and 

 the inorganic. Fechner goes so far as to ascribe con- 

 sciousness to the whole universe and every single body 

 in it, and regards individual organisms merely as parts 

 of one vast universal organism. His system is, there- 

 fore, panpsychistic, and, at the same time, pantheistic, 

 as he somewhat mystically connects the idea of a con- 

 scious God with that of a living universe. Preyer 

 generally agrees with him in extending the idea of life 

 to the whole universe, and conceiving it as an organism. 

 He applies his theory in the symbolic sense which I 

 alluded to on page 38, and described as impracticable. 

 The fiery mass of the forming earth is the gigantic 

 organism, and Preyer gives the name of "life" to its 

 rotatory movement (or gravitational energy). As it 

 cooled down, the heavier metals (the dead inorganic 

 masses) separated from it; from the rest of it were 

 formed first simple and afterwards complex carbon-com- 

 binations, and finally albumin and plasm. This extension 

 of the word "organism " has very properly met with little 

 approval in biology. It only increases the confusion, 

 and the difficulty of marking off biological from abio- 

 logical science, which is both practically necessary and 

 theoretically justified. 



If, then, in our opinion, the eternity -hypotheses are of 

 no more value than the creation-hypotheses, we have 

 left, for the purpose of answering the great question of 

 the origin of life, only the third group of scientific 

 theories which I have combined under the general head 



340 



