THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 83 



tions alone "that anything should be better or be 

 worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and 

 suffering of Man have striven through countless 

 generations to effect." ^ In this conflict of stress 

 and storm, in this wild struggle between organised 

 and unorganised matter, when extended through an 

 almost indefinite time, opportunities arose for an 

 almost indefinite variation of its combinations. And 

 a few such varieties, amongst the many which have 

 long since perished, possessed the qualities which 

 enabled them to persist in the warfare against the 

 brute forces of Nature. In that primitive aggre- 

 gation may we seek the first beginnings and the 

 immense varieties of life. Was it as complicated 

 then as it now is ? Apparently it must have been 

 entirely different. A human being cannot have 

 sprung spontaneously into existence ; and if life did 

 arise as we have supposed, doubtless there was 

 a continuous chain of development from that time 

 till now. 



»'.The question is, how these varieties are possible 

 with such a comparatively small number of atoms ? 

 Well, the atoms are made up of electrons, and we 

 do not yet know if the electrons are not made 

 up of something else. Nay, more, whilst an atom 

 as a unit has certain physical and chemical pro- 

 perties which enable us to ascribe unity to it, it 

 may yet possess many slight variations which should 

 not affect its physical or chemical properties when we 

 have to deal with aggregates, or even with the single 

 1 Eight Hon. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief. 



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