i6 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



properties that we associate with their vitality dis- 

 appear, the objects themselves disintegrate, and 

 ultimately appear as lifeless forms. 



This was too important a matter to be passed over 

 with indifference. Only the casual observer in his 

 most thoughtless moods could have been guilty of so 

 much inaptitude. And yet there were not wanting 

 critics who would have abandoned them to crystal- 

 lographers. 



Well, then, they have not been abandoned, but 

 investigated in divers ways to follow out their actual 

 course ; they have afforded ample material for re- 

 flection, and results which, to say the least of them, 

 are, as we venture to think, not totally devoid in some 

 instances of the highest interest and importance. 



Such unstable aggregates like our 



" Little systems have their day, 

 They have their day and cease to be." 



The dawn of life is thus not a question that need be 

 abandoned in despair. It doubtless must have taken 

 place, as Huxley said, in the remote prodigious vista 

 of the past when the earth was passing through 

 physical and chemical conditions that perhaps it can 

 no more see again than man can recall his infancy ; 

 and the living types upon our planet at the present 

 day are for the most part, at any rate, if not alto- 

 gether, the descendants of a long series of ancestors 

 extending from that remote past down to the present 

 day. These types, however, produced by the means 

 herein described, are far too elementary to be classified 



