62 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



not absolute, for inertness is a relative term : and 

 when we speak of inert matter it will be understood 

 to be merely tliat matter which is inert, so far as we 

 at present know it. 



Thus, indeed, may all Nature be divided into the 

 two great divisions. That containing a vast store of 

 energy which it is displaying or about to display in 

 virtue of its instability ; and that which either forms 

 similar stores of energy, but which is in a stable state 

 which ordinary means cannot disturb, or does not 

 possess that energy at all. 



These are the two states of Matter that we have 

 to deal with. 



The barrier is not between the biological and 

 abiological sciences as familiarly understood, but 

 between those two fields of Nature which deal 

 respectively with such dynamical and statical con- 

 figurations. 



Since the word Life has been used to exclude much 

 that it really ought to include, and the problem of 

 life has thus been abandoned to some semi-mystical ob- 

 scurity, the attitude which we assume is that these are 

 within the sphere of science as we know it to-day. 

 Our opponents, as it seems, would have it relegated to 

 phenomena not yet discovered and we to the pheno- 

 mena we have already obtained. In truth 



" Our path is in the fields we know 

 And theirs in undiscovered lands." 



