2f) ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



Science would rather have no explanation than a 

 form of words which embodies a proposition that 

 cannot be conceived. 



We are forced, then, to the conclusion now 

 generally held by those competent to judge, that 

 ovine vivum ex vivo has not always been true ; that, 

 once upon a time, in conditions which it may now 

 be impossible to reproduce, living matter was 

 evolved from not-living matter on the surface of 

 our planet — in all probability in the waters of the 

 Polar oceans — the first to cool — as Buffon originally 

 suggested. Nor is this by any means inconceivable 

 if we remember that synthetic chemistry can now 

 take the simple elements — carbon, oxygen, hydro- 

 gen, nitrogen — and actually build up molecules 

 of albumin from them. 



But the philosophic reader will say that he can 

 scarcely stomach the teaching that ovine vivum ex 

 vivo is true to-day, and has been true for millions 

 of years, but, once on a fateful time, was not true ; 

 and such a reader has my sympathy. For my- 

 self, I am entirely unconvinced that the evi- 

 dence supposed to prove this dogma is free from 

 grave fallacy ; and, though space does not avail 

 for a discussion of this question here, I would ask 

 the reader to await a book on " The Origin and 

 Nature of Living Matter " which my friend, Dr. 

 Charlton Bastian, F.R.S., will shortly publish. Dr. 

 Bastian is an evolutionist of course, and he sees 

 that the prevailing dogma is improbable, and that 

 its evidential basis is by no means unambiguous. 

 So after a silence of thirty years, the one survivor 

 of the great " spontaneous generation " controversy 



