134 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1154 



a principle without limits or bounds upon whicli 

 free institutions may be based. 



This is the teaching of our science; the 

 ephemeral worth of majority control is al- 

 ways obvious; the voice of the people is 

 not the voice of God. 



(e) "We have come to a point in our re- 

 searches where observation and inference 

 teach us that life originated in unicellular 

 microbie forms under conditions which 

 have been indirectly indicated by the 

 Chamberlins, father and son, as governed 

 by and intimately associated with a con- 

 junction of soil and moisture, with ob- 

 structed air, and probably without direct 

 exposure to the actinic action of the sun- 

 light. There has already been interesting 

 and substantial confirmation of the pres- 

 ence of actual bacteria in the most ancient 

 rocks of continental origin antedating the 

 Cambrian, and many weU-demonstrated 

 expressions. The discovery of fossil bac- 

 teria is to be accredited to several students, 

 Van Ingen among others, but their exist- 

 ence in this age preceding the primordial 

 outburst of life, in times when by every 

 line of sequential reasoning they should 

 exist, this important determination is 

 among the brilliant results of Walcott's 

 researches. 



So now every legitimate evidence of fact 

 and deduction points to the origin of 

 microbie unicellular life in the moist, sub- 

 aerated soil away from the direct sun ; and 

 the soils of to-day are alive — a mighty host 

 — with such microbie creations existing 

 under paranaerobic conditions. This army, 

 we are coming to understand, is endowed 

 with specialized functions ; and if this state- 

 ment is, and is to remain, approximately 

 correct, then the acquisition of such special 

 functions speaks of a long past with its 

 gradual and cumulative inheritance. It 

 still remains to be demonstrated that the 

 cycle of life is renewing itself fj-om day to 



day by the continued transmutation of the 

 inorganic to the organic, however such a 

 possibility may lie in the lap of logic. But 

 it is well for us to realize that this microbie 

 life which in the passage of time has be- 

 come adapted to such special functions that 

 we recognize among them germs of disease 

 as well as of benignaney, has the historic 

 impress of hostility to the direct rays of 

 the sun. Microbie disease is disease only 

 from the human standpoint, from the point 

 of view of the host of the disease-causing 

 parasite. For the germ— the microbie 

 parasite itself — it is normal living. I think 

 we may well urge upon the attention of 

 pathogenists the importance of estimating 

 the historic impress which is, in aU. disease- 

 making bacteria, the natural primitive and 

 inherited hostility to the sunlight. In the 

 adjustments and readjustments of these 

 parasites to special hosts and specific toxic 

 processes some may have overcome in a 

 measure this natural antagonism, but for 

 the most their work is in the dark. The 

 marvelous results which have been attained 

 in the treatment of tetanus during the pres- 

 ent war, by simple and constant exposure 

 to the sunlight, encourages us to believe 

 that in similar pathology a like treatment 

 would be historically and logically correct. 



Fifty years ago, when President Andrew 

 D. White published his "Warfare of Sci- 

 ence and Religion," he said: 



A truth written upon the human heart to-day in 

 its fiill play of emotions or passions can not be 

 at any real variance with the truth written upon 

 a fossil whose poor life ebbed forth millions of 

 years ago. 



These fifty years since have enabled us 

 to say with equal security that the record 

 written on the fossil is the candle by which 

 we must read the fate of the community, 

 the passions and emotions of the human 

 heart. 



We have been shocked into a conscious- 

 ness that not all the virtues abide in us. 



