LIFE PROTOPLASM 105 



If the contention on behalf of carbon be true, if it be 

 endowed with the characteristics to which is due the 

 kindling of life's spark, yet is it helpless standing alone. 

 It can do nothing without hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. 

 These must also be specially endowed for the high qualities 

 with which carbon is favoured, in order that they may 

 be able to call them forth. Chlorine cannot take the 

 place of hydrogen, iodine cannot act for oxygen, phos- 

 phorus cannot play the part of nitrogen; neither can 

 one of the three be substituted for any of its fellows. 

 Hydrogen, and hydrogen alone, but its every atom, has 

 properties able to render to royal carbon the aid required 

 at its hand. Oxygen and nitrogen, and they only, but 

 every atom of each existing, can minister help to the 

 divine element after their fashion; and all three are 

 needed. Oxygen by itself, however willing and ready for 

 fervours, could not have rescued the qualities of its exalted 

 superior from lying eternally dormant. Hydrogen could 

 not, nitrogen could not; no two by their utmost efforts 

 could have advanced it more than a step in the direction of 

 its goal. All three must put forth their strength in many 

 ways, in order that the springs of life may be opened. 

 It was impossible that by chance there should be so great 

 a number of carbon atoms found by each other, endowed 

 according to the demands made on them by this theory. 

 It was impossible that, by chance, carbon should have 

 found as many atoms of one element, if that had been 

 sufficient for it, measured and adapted for its require- 

 ments, as would have made a single living globule ; but 

 what shall we say of the impossibility of multitudinous 

 atoms of carbon finding multitudes without number, not 

 of one element only and its contributions in aid, but of 

 three, and each atom of them so endowed that, after 

 forming combinations and organisations, it should be 



