1 66 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



possible, certain atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 

 and nitrogen leapt together, and, in the conjunction, 

 acquired the special energies and activities that we 

 call life. In the early days, when the atoms 

 clashed together, when the enormous intra-atomic 

 energy was unfettered and unconfined, there is 

 no saying what may have happened. "If," says 

 Huxley, " it were given to me to look beyond 

 the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still 

 more remote period when the earth was passing 

 through physical and chemical conditions, which 

 it can no more see again than a man can recall 

 his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the 

 evolution of living protoplasm from non-living 

 matter." " Who," asks Tyndall, " will set limits 

 to the possible play of molecules in a cooling 

 planet ? " Doubtless, physical conditions were 

 very different then, when the world was cooling ; 

 and it is quite possible to hold that life originated 

 then, and ceased to originate when the conditions 

 altered. Spencer held it likely that life began 

 " at a time when the heat of the earth's surface 

 was falling through those ranges of temperature 

 at which the higher organic compounds are un- 

 stable" ; and he, Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall all 

 considered themselves "justified in supposing that 

 natural causes are now no longer able independ- 

 ently to initiate this living matter, or protoplasm, 



