36 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



It is curious, is it not, how Science, or rather the 

 history of Science, thus repeats itself? The same 

 fallacies again and again due to the same misuse of 

 words, to definitions inadequately expressed or based 

 on insufficient evidence. It is due to certain facts, 

 to the taking for granted as ultimate certain facts 

 which, after all, are merely the farthest that our 

 knowledge or experience has as yet reached. 



To the savage mind everything is miraculous, and 

 thus directly the intervention of a First Cause. The 

 idea of causation in the scientific sense is altogether 

 absent. Even to the great Malebranche the process 

 of breaking an egg when it falls to the ground is due 

 to the direct will of the Creator. He makes it fall 

 and He breaks it. However true this may or may 

 not be in the ultimate chain of causation, it certainly 

 is not true that it is not performed by the interven- 

 tion of a long chain of causes and effects. It is the 

 want of recognition of this endless series of events 

 that distinguishes the savage or untutored intelligence 

 from the scientific and philosophic mind. It is so also 

 even with scientists and philosophers when they forget 

 themselves, and we have all of us something of the 

 savage in us still. That detailed study of the many 

 facts they have spun together with consistency in 

 their own field of labour makes them forgetful of the 

 many fields that lie beyond this little garden where 

 they toil, and bids them fain to imagine, even though 

 unconsciously, with characteristic inconsistency, that 

 the farthest limit they have reached is now and for 

 evermore the end. 



