LIFE AND LIGHT 37 



would here come in the tendency of external conditions to stop the 

 process at certain levels, and the steeper slopes of development 

 would only be infrequently ascended until the establishment of 

 something resembling a species, but still short of life, arose by a 

 run over into a stable condition in one case out of many millions 

 possible. This species of highly organised colloid could then more 

 easily reproduce itself by inoculation into suitable material than by 

 starting from simpler bodies ab initio, and would form a fresh 

 starting-point for further development, just as at the stage of living 

 things each new species would form a fresh point of departure. A 

 labile equilibrium, stable and capable of reproducing itself so long as 

 there existed examples of itself with suitable conditions of material 

 and energetic environment, would so be set up, but would require 

 a long period of time for redevelopment if once the type were lost. 



In any search for synthesis of colloids up towards living 

 structures we must accordingly turn to a new field, and begin 

 searching for colloids susceptible to light or other forms of external 

 energy, and look for evidence of building up in colloidal complexity 

 and colloidal synthesis under input of energy. 



AVhatever may have been the origin of living matter in the past 

 history of the world-, we find such matter to-day in all living 

 organisms existing as a number of exceedingly complicated colloidal 

 structures, the origin of all of which can be traced directly or 

 indirectly to the energy of sunshine, fashioned into chemical energy 

 in organic colloidal bodies, the chloroplasts, formed in the green 

 cells of plants, or plantlike organisms. These colloids always exist 

 in intimate relationship with crystalloids, and cannot be fabricated 

 or utilised without crystalloids. 



All their energy properties are closely bound up with an unstable 

 or labile equilibrium allowing of ready attachment or detachment 

 of constituent groups, and the very strength and suitability of the 

 constituents depends upon the ease with which they can be broken 

 down. As a result of this lability and tendency to change, the 

 constituents of living matter possess in highest degree the power 

 both of joining with one another and of inducing what is styled by 

 the chemist conjugation or condensation to form highly complex 

 molecules. 



