THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 25 



a superstition, and maintain that every living thing 

 must have had a living ancestor — omne vivum ex vivo. 



Now if we assume that this dogma is true to-day, 

 we find ourselves in a quandary when we come to 

 ask how the first forms of life came to be on our 

 planet. There are only three possibilities. The 

 dogma that life always precedes life may be true 

 to-day, but has not always been true, time having 

 been when life did actually evolve from not-life ; 

 or, secondly, the first form or forms of living matter 

 must have been the results of a Creative Act, the 

 law of continuity being interrupted by the inter- 

 vention of a superhuman Person ; or, thirdly, as 

 Lord Kelvin once suggested, the first germs of life 

 may have been borne to this planet by a meteorite 

 derived from the " moss-grown ruins of another 

 world." 



With due respect to the most illustrious scientist 

 cf the age, we may dismiss Lord Kelvin's theory 

 as, at best, a mere begging of the question. There 

 is evidence of vegetation on Mars, and Professor 

 Pickering maintains that there are traces of its 

 action on the moon; but the problem is not solved 

 by merely shifting its locale. Whence the life on 

 Mars, if omne vivum ex vivo has always been true ? 



Then, again, the statement recently made by 

 Lord Kelvin, who speaks without authority on 

 biological matters, that for the origin of life 

 " Science absolutely demands Creative Power," 

 cannot be and is not accepted by biologists. They 

 recognise in it a last survival of the " special 

 creation " myth, and a typical instance of what 

 has well been called the " theology of gaps." 



