130 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



"We can perceive also that in the inorganic world 

 the survival of the fittest holds good as much as 

 in the organic world, and that the gap between 

 these two, however insuperable it may seem to 

 be, is also the consequence of the same law : of 

 the elimination of primordial or primitive types 

 between living and dead matter, which once gave 

 rise to the types that now survive, but were 

 unfitted to survive themselves. Perhaps they were 

 not the ancestors of these at all, but only the 

 links between them and the rest of things. It 

 is in this way that life as we see it to-day un- 

 doubtedly had its origin. And in trying to unravel 

 the problem of that origin, at the present day, 

 the only direction as it seems to us in which pro- 

 gress can be made is in that which may give a 

 clue as to the nature of those eliminated forms 

 themselves. In other words, in trying to fill in 

 the gaps by producing artificially such of them 

 as have long since ceased to be. To do this in 

 every case would be altogether beyond hope ; but 

 to do it in some instances, in determining the 

 possibilities of the combination and admixtures of 

 organic and of inorganic matter, that is the goal 

 towards which we can only beckon : the promised 

 land which it may never be our lot to enter, and 

 which we may only view as from a lonely and 

 far distant standpoint. In imagination at least we 

 can picture to our mind's eye the detailed structure, 

 and the minute construction of their many parts. 

 But our eyes are dimmed, and the images that we 



