I48 HUXLEY 



I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of 

 living protoplasm from not-living matter. 



I should expect to see it appear under forms of 

 great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with 

 the power of determining the formation of new pro- 

 toplasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, 

 oxalates, and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, 

 and water without the aid of light. That is the ex- 

 pectation to which analogical reasoning leads me; 

 but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no 

 right to call my opinion anything but an act of philo- 

 sophical faith. l 



The success which has attended the search after 

 fundamental likeness between the earth and its living, 

 as well as not-living, contents, has followed all obser- 

 vation into the nature and constitution of the system 

 of which the earth is one of the lesser members. 

 While the conditions prevailing in the sun and planets 

 make it certain that life, as we know it, cannot be 

 present in them, the differences between them and 

 our globe are only, using the term in its chemical 

 sense, quantitative. They are made of the same 

 stuff as the globe itself. So, broadly speaking, are 

 the stars. The year 1859 * s memorable in science, 

 not only for the publication of the Origin of Species^ 

 but for the triumphant researches of Kirchhoff and 

 Bunsen into the chemistry of the sun. 



In 1802, one hundred and thirty years after New- 



1 Coll. Essays, viii. p. 256. 



