52 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



is to be found in the inorganic, and that only in the 

 organic has it the opportunity of thus becoming 

 manifested. Life-stuff or bioplasm, as distinct from 

 protoplasm, is inorganic and contains the germ and 

 mode of motion of vitality. It is not a seed that 

 grows in every soil, but only flourishes in the chosen 

 environment of beef-jelly. This, however, does not 

 detract in the least from the two points that on the 

 one hand the products of radium and bouillon mani- 

 fest vitality, and on the other that vitality in this 

 particular case, and in the most general sense in which 

 we use the word, is due to radium. The origin of life 

 itself remains unsolved because we do not know what 

 the substance and the environment were in which it 

 first made its appearance. In ordinary soil it may 

 have taken seons to assert or manifest itself even as 

 a radiobe, or something similar in that scale of being, 

 and seons still to develop as a bacillus, and this may 

 have been the one favoured type which out of millions 

 of varieties was most suited to survive. Upon these 

 points there is scarcely need to dwell, because the 

 actual manner in which life arose is beyond our 

 present knowledge. In the laboratory we can demon- 

 strate the production of varieties by natural selection, 

 and can thus reason back as to the origin of species. 

 So also from the fact that we can produce artificial 

 types of vital bodies are we enabled to carry our minds 

 back in seons to the remote past when similar types, 

 though certainly not the same, first appeared upon 

 the surface of our globe. 



When we turn our attention once again to the 



