86 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



This is not all that counts for our contention, 

 unsatisfactory in some ways as it yet may be. 

 In the correlation of the vast fields of such 

 phenomena as we see around us, we can perceive, 

 as we say, the principle of some intrinsic power 

 which runs throughout one type of matter which 

 we call active, and is absent in the other, which we 

 call inert. And in a milder form even this too, with 

 its slight instability in countless ages, as it seems, 

 may in its turn join issue in the great struggle for life. 

 When this instability becomes apparent, the first signs 

 of vitality may be admitted to have at length set 

 in. And, whatever diflferences there may still be 

 between this primordial type or vital energy and the 

 immeasurably more complex types in which it may 

 yet occur, the mode of action is, as we have 

 endeavoured to depict, the same. 



Having made it clear to ourselves that spontaneous 

 generation in the past, and spontaneous generation at 

 the present day, may not be expected to give rise to 

 the same kind of germs, the conditions being quite 

 diiferent, and that, as we plead, due allowance should 

 be made for such differences as may then be ob- 

 served : it would, we fear, be the height of presump- 

 tion to assert that, because these artificial products 

 have not all the qualities of that living matter which 

 Nature has handed down to us, or rather has been 

 unable to destroy, therefore life in some simpler 

 form, or in some different form, cannot actually arise 

 artificially, even when there is indisputable evidence 

 of its actual presence by such means. 



