22 DARWINIAN AND SPENCERIAN 



We have here the chemical analogue of a dimorphic or poly- 

 morphic species. Now what the biologist requires in order 

 to bridge the gap between living and dead carbon com- 

 pounds may possibly be an internal mobility or lability 

 of the order indicated — not a restricted tautomerism, 

 but a comparatively unlimited ifesponsivity to varying 

 environments ; a highly enhanced faculty of tautomeriza- 

 tion. The survival of carbon compounds may from this 

 point of view be the result either of extreme stability, as 

 in ordinary pjnrogenic S3mthesis, or of extreme internal 

 lability conferring adaptability to variable conditions, 

 such adaptability enabling these particular atomic group- 

 ings to resist destructive agencies. If there is anything 

 in this suggestion, then the development of life has been 

 just as much a process of selection as the subsequent 

 differentiation of living organic matter into specific 

 forms. Out of numbers of primordial synthetical products 

 containing carbon none have survived but the stablest 

 ' mineral ' compounds, such as carbon dioxide and 

 (possibly) hydrocarbons on the one hand, and, on the 

 other hand, the lineal descendants of those protoplasmic 

 corpuscles to which the most highly susceptible tauto- 

 merizable compounds gave rise. Modem physiological 

 research, and especially the work of Bayliss and Starling, 

 favours the view that in the lowest forms of protoplasmic 

 life the responsivity is even now of a purely chemical 

 character. 



I am fuUy aware that this discussion amounts to little 

 more than a restatement of the old problem — not of the 

 origin, but of the development of living from lifeless 

 matter, a point which Spencer has of course dealt with 

 in a general way.^ All that is claimed is that the case 

 has possibly been stated in more specific terms than 

 hitherto, and certainly in a more distiactly Darwinian 

 sense, At certain stages of scientific development it is 

 always useful to raise questions even if the present state 

 of knowledge does not admit of their being answered. 



' See particularly the Principles of Biology, chap. i. 



