ON THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 665 



Moore's has been actively taken up and developed by Prof. Baly in recent years. He 

 has conclusively proved that, in the presence of light, moisture and carbon dioxide, 

 formaldehyde and sugar can be produced at the surface of certain coloured inorganic 

 compounds, such as nickel carbonate. We may therefore conclude that the production 

 of the necessary organic substances in the primeval ocean offers no insuperable obstacle 

 to science. But there is still a very great difficulty in the way, a difficulty that was 

 pointed out bj' Prof. Japp, I think, at a former meeting of the British Association in 

 Dover. The protein components of the protoplasmic system are optically active 

 substances. As is well known, such optically active substances, i.e. those which rotate 

 the plane of polarisation of polarised light, are molecularly asymmetric and always 

 exist in two forms, a dextro-rotatory and a Isevo-rotatory form. Both these forms 

 possess equal energies, and so their formations in a chemical reaction are equally 

 probable. As a matter of fact, chemical reaction always produces these two forms 

 in equal quantities, and so the resulting mixture is optically inactive. How, then, did 

 the optically active protein of the first protoplasm arise ? In spite of many attempts 

 to emploj' plane or circularly polarised light for this purpose chemists have not, 

 so far as I know, succeeded in producing an asymmetric synthesis, i.e. a production 

 of the dextro- or Isevo-rotatory form, starting from optically inactive, that is to say, 

 symmetrical substances. The nut which Prof. Japp asked us to crack has turned 

 out to be a very hard one, though there is little reast)n to doubt that it will be cracked 

 sooner or later. Even were this accomplished, very formidable difficulties still remain, 

 for we have to imagine the production of the dynamically organised and regulated 

 structure of living protoplasm. Prof. Guye of Geneva has in recent years offered some 

 very interesting considerations concerning this difficult problem. According to the 

 statistical theory of probability, if we wait long enough, anj'thing that is possible, 

 no matter how improbable, will happen. All the ordinary events of life happen 

 frequently because they are very probable, whilst the improbable things happen on 

 an average relatively rarely. The celebrated problem of the ' typewriting monkeys ' 

 may be cited as an example. If six monkeys were set before six typewriters and 

 allowed to hit the keys at their own sweet ■will, how long would it be before they 

 nroduced — by mere chance — all the written books in the British Museum ? It would 

 be a very long, but not an infinitely long, time. 



Now the Second Law of Thermodynamics, to the scrutiny o' which we subjected 

 the phenomena of life, is purely a law of statistical probability. The odds against 

 Mr. Home, the celebrated medium of former days, levitating without any compensating 

 work or energy effect, are enormously heavy. The unco-ordinated energy in and around 

 Mr. Home might indeed spontaneously convert a part of itself into the co-ordinated 

 energy of Mr. Home rising majestically into the air, but the safe odds against that 

 happening are simply terrific. The ordinary large-scale happenings of the world, 

 with which we are so familiar, are simply events where the odds on are gigantically 

 enormous. The coming down of Mr. Home with a bump is an event on which we 

 could safely bet, with an assurance of success quite unknown in racing or roulette. 

 The theory of probability tells us that there always exist fluctuations from the most 

 probable event. In the physico-chemical world of atoms, molecules and waves 

 these fluctuations are ordinarily imperceptible, owing to the enormous number of 

 individuals concerned. In very small regions of space, however, these fluctuations 

 become important, and the Second Law of Thermodj-namics ceases to run. We 

 have seen that the structure of living protoplasm is extraordinarily fine and delicate. 

 Do events happen here which are to be classed as molecular fluctuations, or even as 

 individual molecular events, rather than as the mass-probabiUties which have led 

 men to formulate the Second Law ? Something of that sort was probably in the 

 mind of Helmholtz when he doubted the application of this law to the phenomena of 

 life, oft'ing to the fineness of the structures involved. The reasoning of Guye bears 

 rather on the origin of life. Is the spontaneous birth of a minute living organism, 

 he asks, simply a very rare event, an exceedingly improbable fluctuation from the 

 average ? This is a fascinating point of view, but it possesses one drawback. What 

 is there to stabilise and fix this rare event when it occurs ? Guye has himself realised 

 this difficulty, but it may not be an insurmountable one. Such rare fluctuations may 

 occasionally' cause matter and energy to arrive at peculiar critical states where 

 and whence the curve of happening, the world space-time line, starts out on a different 

 path, and a new adventure arises in the hidden micro-cosmos. 



If life has sprung from the non-living, its earliest forms must have been (or must 

 be?) excessively minute. We must look for these, if anjrwhere, in those queer things 



