THE INTERPRETER 147 



who can comprehend the modus operandi of the electric 

 spark ? Chemistry has also succeeded in manufac- 

 turing nearly two hundred organic compounds from 

 dead matter; Professor Britschli has even produced a 

 substance which simulates protoplasm, — but the 

 arcana vita remains hidden. Nevertheless, noting 

 what advances have been made in organic chemistry, 

 in molecular physics, and in physiology, Huxley 

 thinks that " it would be the height of presumption 

 for any man to say that the conditions under which 

 matter assumes the properties we call ' vital ' may not 

 be artificially brought together." The manifest inti- 

 mate connection between vital and electrical phenom- 

 ena is a further reason against dogmatism on the 

 subject. And since the " scientific use of the imagi- 

 nation " has been the handmaid of progress, it is 

 permissible to speculate, as does Huxley, on the 

 possible mode of the beginning of life, whose " vital 

 spark," once kindled, has, like the fire on the altar 

 of Vesta, known no extinguishment. 



To say that, in the admitted absence of evidence, I 

 have any belief as to the mode in which the existing 

 forms of life have originated, would be using words 

 in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible 

 where belief is not ; and if it were given me to look 

 beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the 

 still more remote period when the earth was passing 

 through physical and chemical conditions which it can 

 no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, 



