174 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



the time during which life will afterwards flourish 

 on the planet." Yes, but another comparison 

 still must be made. The time on which life can 

 flourish on a planet is very insignificant compared 

 with the aeons when it cannot — a mere momentary- 

 episode in its thermal history. Every germ, 

 accordingly, which reaches an unsuitable planet or 

 a suitable planet at an unsuitable time would be 

 lost, and in time, by the law of averages (even 

 taking no account of the germs which must perish 

 in space), space would be depleted of germs. Nor 

 could space be resown from fertile planets, since 

 the germs would presumably evolve, and become 

 more and more unfit to face such a journey as, say, 

 the journey from our solar system to its nearest 

 neighbour. Alpha Centauri. 



But even admitting Arrhenius' or Kelvin's 

 theories workable, they are unsatisfactory ; for, in 

 the first place, it is almost impossible for the mind 

 to believe that the tremendously complex and 

 intricate structure of living tissues composed of 

 various changeable atoms, and indeed whose very 

 essence is change, have existed, floating about in 

 space, from all time, waiting for worlds to be ready 

 to develop them. Further, it seems to us that a 

 world in such intimate and intricate correspondence 

 with a molecular complex as to be able to develop 

 it from an amoeba into a man would surely, in all 



