THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE 



ever-present atoms into " vital " associations ? Perhaps 

 extreme pressure may be one of these conditions ; and, 

 for aught any man knows to the contrary, the "spon- 

 taneous generation " of living protoplasm may be taking 

 place incessantly at the bottom of every ocean of the 

 globe. 



This of course is a mere bald statement of possibilities. 

 It may be met by another statement of possibilities, to 

 the effect that perhaps the conditions necessary to the 

 evolution of living matter here may IUIVQ been fulfilled 

 but once, since which time the entire current of life on 

 our globe has been a diversified stream from that one 

 source. Observe, please, that this assumption does not 

 fall within that category which I mention above as con- 

 traband of science in speaking of the origin of worlds. 

 The existence of life on our globe is only an incident 

 limited to a relatively insignificant period of time, and 

 whether the exact conditions necessary to its evolution 

 pertained but one second or a hundred million years does 

 not in the least matter in a philosophical analysis. It is 

 merely a question of fact, just as the particular temper- 

 ature of the earth's surface at any given epoch is a ques- 

 tion of fact, the one condition, like the other, being tem- 

 porary and incidental. But, as I have said, the question 

 of fact as to the exact time of origin of life on our globe 

 is a question science as yet cannot answer. 



But, in any event, what is vastly more important than 

 this question as to the duration of time in which living 

 matter was evolved is a comprehension of the philosophi- 

 cal status of this evolution from the "non-vital" to the 

 " vital." If one assumes that this evolution was brought 

 about by an interruption of the play of forces hitherto 

 working in the universe that the correlation of forces 



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