84 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 



According to many evolutional theorists these 

 contrasts between the organic and the inorganic (animate 

 and inanimate), between animals and plants, between 

 families and classes within the same kingdom, should 

 not be of such a kind as to be inexplicable by ' evolu- 

 tion/ The acceptance of a genetic connection is indeed 

 a ' postulate of the evolutionary doctrine/ This we 

 must contest, since there are lacking at least so far as 

 the origin of life from the inorganic world and the 

 evolution of animals from plants are concerned all 

 the conditions for the acceptance of a ' postulate/ 



1. We are not justified in regarding the origin of 

 organisms upon our Earth as the result of an 

 evolutionary process. 



It is no part of our task to consider here all the 

 attempts which have ever been made to explain the 

 appearance of life upon our planet. Fechner and 

 W. Preyer, for instance, accept the priority of life and 

 deduce the inorganic from the organic. According to 

 them the lifeless bodies were ' the signs of the dead 

 primeval gigantic organisms, whose breath perhaps 

 was glowing iron vapour, their blood molten metal, and 

 their food perhaps the meteorites/ 



Several eminent physicists HelmLolz, W. Thomson 

 (Lord Kelvin), and most recently Svante Arrhenius 

 represent the ' opinion ' that organisms have ever been 

 associated with the inorganic material, and, pervading 

 the universe, spread the germs of life wherever a world 



