THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



detached portions of dead animals or plants; little 

 isolated chlorophyll-granules that may be found every- 

 where are looked upon as rejected products of vegetal 

 cells. But who could refute the assumption that they 

 are really plassonella or young monera, which grow 

 slowly and unite with similar particles to form larger 

 plasmic bodies ? 



It is often objected to our naturalistic and monistic 

 conception of archigony that we have not yet succeeded 

 in forming albuminous bodies, and especially plasm, in 

 our chemical laboratories by artificial synthesis; from 

 this the perverse dualistic conclusion is drawn that it is 

 only supernatural vital forces that can do this. It is 

 forgotten that we do not yet know the complicated 

 structure of albuminous bodies, and that we do not yet 

 know what really happens inside the green chlorophyll- 

 granules which in every plant-cell convert the radiant 

 energy of sunlight into the virtual energy of the new- 

 formed plasm. How can we be expected to reproduce 

 synthetically, with the imperfect and crude methods of 

 present chemistry, an elaborate chemical process the 

 nature of which is not analytically known to us ? How- 

 ever, the worthlessness of this sceptical objection is 

 obvious: we can never claim that a natural process is 

 supernatural because we cannot artificially reproduce it. 



