THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



urea. The resulting compounds, being insoluble, sepa- 

 rate from the solution in the form of minutest specks of 

 living matter, which speedily develop into this or that 

 kind of primordial organism. Such higher compounds 

 might be considered to correspond to the ' physiological 

 units' whose existence Mr. Herbert Spencer 1 postulates 

 in order to explain the various phenomena coming 

 under the head of ' organic polarity.' 



After pointing out that the phenomena cannot be 

 accounted for if we suppose such c polarity ' to be pos- 

 sessed by the ordinary chemical constituents of living 

 things by their mere molecules of fibrine, albumen, or 

 gelatine; and also that the phenomena are even more 

 inexplicable if we assume that such polarity is the 

 property of any kind of morphological unit (such as 

 a c cell') existing in living things, Mr. Spencer adds: 

 c If then this organic polarity can be possessed neither 

 by the chemical units nor the morphological units, we 

 must conceive it as possessed by certain intermediate 

 units, which we may term physiological. There seems 

 no alternative but to suppose that the chemical units 

 combine into units immensely more complex than 

 themselves, complex as they are; and that in each 

 organism the physiological units produced by this 

 further compounding of highly compound atoms, have 

 a more or less distinctive character 2 . We must con- 



1 ' Principles of Biology,' vol. i. p. 182. 



1 For further suggestions with regard to these physiological units, the 

 reader may consult the Appendix (p. 486) to Mr. Spencer's ' Principles 

 of Biology.' 



