ON ARTIFICIAL CELLS 129 



species ; and the offsprings thus produced are ab- 

 normal and degenerate forms that cannot last. 



The possibility of thus effecting reproduction of 

 some sort artificially, and the fact also that artificial 

 cells of protoplasmic substances can be formed by 

 such processes as we have described, show that the 

 mechanism in these phenomena is of a much simpler 

 physical nature than might at first sight be imagined. 



Now the problem which presents itself to us is 

 that of endeavouring to fill in the gap — futile though 

 it may seem to be to endeavour to do so perfectly 

 — between living and dead matter. 



We see around us the disappearance, not merely 

 of living types, but even the disappearance of 

 inorganic ones ; we see the death of worlds and 

 the death of atoms ; we can carry our minds back- 

 wards to the time, perhaps not so very long ago, 

 when the elements were more numerous than they 

 now are ; when some radio-active matters, now 

 extinct, played a part in the phenomena of Nature, 

 which we can no more picture to ourselves 

 than recall events of which we have neither the 

 record nor the memory. In the disappearance of 

 such types of organic and of inorganic matter, we 

 can conceive also the disappearance of the links 

 which once connected them together. We can 

 realise, perhaps more vividly than might at first 

 be possible, how it was that in time the sifting 

 out of the unstable and the unfit could give rise 

 to those anomalies and apparent breaks in the con- 

 tinuity of Nature which now seem so unintelligible. 



K 



