i8 DARWINIAN AND SPENCERIAN 



&c. The biological analogue of this phenomenon is the 

 power or faculty of adaptability to a variable environ- 

 ment displayed by Hving organisms. 



If this analogy be conceded^and I do not think it is 

 overstrained — it must hold good for that primordial 

 synthesis of organic (i.e. carbon) compounds from which 

 were developed the simplest compounds possessing those 

 characters associated with the term ' vitahty ', at this 

 stage in its most rudimentary form. On a globe coohng 

 down from an igneous condition many such syntheses 

 would become possible. The conditions of survival woidd 

 be of precisely the same kind, if different in degree, as 

 those which determine laboratory syntheses of the same 

 pyrogenic order. Most Evolutionists believe that the gap 

 between the simpler synthetical carbon compounds and 

 the simplest form of ' vitaUzed' (i. e. ' organized ') carbon 

 compound has been bridged over by natural processes.^ 



^ On this point see Spencer's Principles of Biology, vol. i, chap, i and 

 appendix ; Darwin to Cams in i865, More Letters, vol. i, p. 273 ; 

 Huxley's Presidential Address to the British Associatloil, Liverpool, 

 1870; Darwin to Mackintosh, 1882, More Letters, vol. ii, p. 171 ; Ray 

 Lankester on ' Protoplasm ', Encycl. Brit. ; the writer's Address to the 

 Essex Field Club on ' Darwin and Modern Evolution ', in 1883 ; Trans- 

 actions of the Club for that year ; Karl Pearson, The Grammar of 

 Science, 2nd ed.,- chap. ix. Also Professor Sorley's recent paper ' The 

 Interpretation of Evolution ', Proc. Brit. Acad., vol. iv, 1909. The 

 theory of ' panspermia ' (see Worlds in the Making, by Arrhenius, 

 chap, viii) postulates the existence of eternal and universally distributed 

 life germs ready to develop whenever placed under favourable con- 

 ditions. This hypothesis shelves the question of the possible origin of 

 those particular chemical compounds of carbon and other elements 

 associated with life as we know it — ^and no other form of life comes 

 under consideration — and relegates these compounds to the ' Ultimates ' 

 with Energy and Matter. The history of science, however, shows how 

 dangerous it is to brush aside mysteries, i. e. unsolved problems, and 

 to interpose the barrier placarded ' eternal — no thoroughfare ! ' 

 Not long ago the chemical atom was considered to be eternal, and 

 attempts to arrive at a knowledge of its origin were regarded as futile. 

 The chemical atom at that stage of scientific development was an 

 ' Ultimate '. From later physical research we now learn that not only 

 is the atom not eternal, but that we are likely to know more about 

 its inner mechanism and the causes of its mortality than about the 

 atom itself as a concrete particle. Such^being the state of modern 

 science with respect to comparatively simple particles, it may reason- 



