110 HISTORY OF THE OCEANS 



geneous in character, will tend to form the little coacervate drops 

 on which he bases the latter part of his theory of evolution of life. 

 The essence of such coacervates is that they can retain their 

 individuality and float around in water without dissolving; in 

 other words, once polymerization occurs, there is no more danger 

 of destruction of life by dilution. But this is not all. Here again I 

 have been led to modify somewhat the general ideas of Oparin and 

 many others who have discussed the origin of life. One way of 

 considering the origin of life is to consider that there was a defi- 

 nitely preorganic stage in which very large amounts of materials 

 were synthesized by purely inorganic means and then gathered 

 together and perhaps associated in coacervates, after which 

 metabolism started. I do not take this view now. I believe that 

 metabolism in the wider sense was occurring all the time, and the 

 present day metabolism is simply a refinement of the earliest 

 quasi-inorganic metabolisms. In other words, I believe that the 

 method of living evolved at the same time as its material. 



This would imply that even before the stage of polymerization, 

 that is, still in the adsorption or clay stage, something of the nature 

 of the balanced chemical reactions would have been occurring 

 through the whole extent of the mass — what I have called the 

 subvital areas. W^hat would be the character of these changes? We 

 can see something of this by considering present day biochemical 

 changes which may be characterized by two general features, first 

 of all enzyme actions or specific catalyst actions. These enable 

 certain chemical reactions, which would have occurred anyhow, 

 to occur very much faster. Enzyme actions are responsible for 

 every change in present living organisms. But with the enzymes 

 are associated substances called coenzymes that have a different 

 function. Whereas the enzymes are specific, that is each enzyme 

 helps to carry out one particular reaction, the coenzymes are 

 much more generalized, they are much fewer, and their function 

 is to transfer energy from one part of the system to the other, and 

 thus to enable chemical reactions, which otherwise would not take 

 place, to occur by transferring the extra energy provided in other 

 chemical reactions. This is a way of balancing accounts which 

 prevents, as it were, the system from heating at one place or 



