532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



detail, by the production of facts undermining their experiments, 

 but which did not touch the foundation of their doctrine. No one 

 will ever cause to appear in a vial, by combining all imaginable 

 elements, a microscopic animal or plant, however simple, with a 

 definite configuration, because that requires duration of existence 

 behind it. The problem to be solved is not there. The necessary 

 thing is to create that unknown molecular movement which alone 

 constitutes life and which brings on all the rest. 



At the present time chemists seem to be on the point of obtain- 

 ing by synthesis substances similar to those of which some of the 

 important parts of animals and plants are made ; but we must 

 not nourish a chimerical hope too rapidly. There is a chasm be- 

 tween the end almost reached by M. Schutzenberger and others, 

 and the creation of the smallest parcel of living matter. One 

 may make albumin like that of an egg, fibrin like that of the 

 blood, but he will still have inert substances, as they are. The 

 white of an egg is not living, although it emanated from a living 

 being, no more than the shell and the greater part of the yolk. 

 It is simply a secretion an outthrow of the living flesh of the 

 hen and which acquires from it nothing more than a composi- 

 tion nearly identical with it, and in any case extremely complex. 

 Hence the difficulty of reproducing artificially a similar body by 

 the synthesis of the very numerous chemical elements that com- 

 pose its delicate structure. Every molecule must be there and in 

 its place. Even when this synthesis has been performed in his 

 retorts, has the chemist produced life, ? Not at all ! He will be 

 like Prometheus in the face of his clay statue ; the fire from 

 heaven will be wanting the living fire. That albumin, that 

 fibrin, the issue of the combination of any number whatever of 

 the different elements that should compose it, remain inert sub- 

 stances. 



Yet the thought of producing living matter does not seem en- 

 tirely hopeless. The conditions have already necessarily been 

 realized on the planet, and perhaps many times. It is not impos- 

 sible that at the bottom of the ocean or in stagnant waters sarco- 

 dic masses are still taking spontaneous birth. We have no evi- 

 dence of it, but such a phenomenon does not appear liable to the 

 fundamental objection. How shall we surprise this beginning of 

 life ? If science shall ever succeed in achieving this great work 

 in its laboratories it will have accomplished the desire of the first 

 man of the Mosaic legend. We shall know what life and death 

 are. The dream of the heterogenists will be realized, and man 

 will indeed have created life. Translated for The Popular Science 

 Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes. 



