148 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



indestructible organic molecules, which have not as 

 yet been actually isolated ; an element of a higher 

 and more unstable type than any as yet known, 

 and of whose physical and chemical properties we 

 can only form the faintest guess ; an element or 

 organic compound which would possess some of the 

 physical properties of comparatively stable and yet 

 really unstable aggregations of aether units like the 

 atoms of uranium, thorium, and radium themselves. 

 Their energy would seem to spring from some 

 immaterial source, although, strictly speaking, it 

 would form a part of the connected totality of 

 things, and be subject likewise in its final aspect 

 to the same laws which regulate the universal 

 whole. Such vital units would of course be physical 

 units too. The idea which runs throughout this 

 book is that such vital units are of the nature of 

 elements, probably more unstable than the so-called 

 dead elements of inanimate matter, although these, 

 too, possess that quality of instability in a less 

 marked degree, and are the aggregates of sethereal 

 units or electrons, centres of vast quantities of 

 energy stored up in the all-pervading sether. 



These vital units would themselves differ in many 

 ways from each other. It is to them that we should 

 look for the vast multiplicity in organic types. 

 They would, in fact, be the directing factor in each 

 case upon which the subsequent development of 

 the cell depends — elements, or, if we prefer to call 

 them, as it is best to do, substances, which have 

 been preserved only by the nuclear boundaries and 



