THE NATUHE OF LIFE. o41 



the time. So that, as it seems to me, whatever vieAv may be 

 taken of spontaneous generation, which Avas in vogne some 

 years ago, facts are completely opposed to it. (Applause.) 

 There is not a fact that justifies the inference that under 

 any circumstances, the living can come from the non-living, 

 and the more carefully we investigate the oasss supposed to 

 favour the doctrine referred to, the more certain we feel 

 that mistakes have been made. So that I think it may 

 be most positively laid down that everything that has ever 

 lived certainly came from something which lived before. 



4. All living matter, of whatever nature, forms substances 

 Tvhich differ entirely from the living matter itself. All 

 living matter is structureless — it has no form, and the 

 active life-power cannot be separated from the matter and 

 examined. When any attempt is made to do so, what 

 happens is death; and when we come to examijie what 

 remains, please remember that we are not examining the 

 living thing, hut the products which resulted froui death, 

 and this holds good all through nature as far as is known. 

 Some chemists make out wonderful things ; but when they 

 conclude that the components they obtain were actually 

 present in the living matter, they go a great deal too far 

 and too fast, for they succeed only in destroying the life. 

 You must destroy the life before you can chemically examine 

 the substance of a living thing, or in any way analyse it. 



5. Let us try to ascertain how life — vital power — differs 

 from all other forces known in the natural world. Whether 

 life began on this globe twenty nnllions, fifty millions, or a 

 thousand millions of years ago, seems to me to be a matter 

 of no real interest. We cannot conceive changes ivhich are 

 ^spread over an enormous distance of time like that. So 

 that if elementary and other substances were originally 

 formed, nobody can know how or when, or whether life 

 originated in them, or in some other way cannot be reason- 

 ably considered until, at any rate, we find out what life is here. 



Neither do I think it profitable to discuss whether life, as 

 present on the surface of the globe now, resulted from life 

 being brought here on a fragment of another world. It 

 seems to me we cannot profitably discuss such a conjecture. 

 Whether the organic forms would live in passing through 

 the ether and then through our atmosphere, 1 do not know, 

 and the idea cannot be submitted to experiment. They 

 must have been very strong living things indeed, if they 

 I'eached this earth alive. And then I should think that 



