154 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



and be found to be derived from sources purely 

 physical. Such a phenomenon is already familiar to 

 us in the case of radio-active bodies, the amount of 

 energy stored up in the atoni being very great indeed. 

 Only when the stability of motion of the electrons is 

 lost is the energy radiated intensely. Such energy 

 as we know is of such a magnitude that that of the 

 most powerful explosives cannot compare with it. 

 The atom may remain thousands of years in perfectly 

 stable equilibrium, but when the stability is lost that 

 rearrangement of the electrons takes place which is 

 accompanied by a vast amount of radiation. 



It is in this manner that we have imagined the 

 nucleus of the cell to behave, and it is conceivable 

 that that nucleus in its ultimate aspect may prove to 

 be nothing more than an agglomeration or aggregate 

 of electrons in an unstable state, highly complicated 

 no doubt by the vast number of electrons which 

 compose it ; but capable however of behaving some- 

 what as the unstable elements themselves. In fact, as 

 radium is the descendant of uranium, so uranium too 

 may be, and most probably is, the descendant, direct 

 or indirect, of other and more unstable elements, of 

 whose actual properties we have at present not the 

 faintest knowledge. 



The nucleus may contain many million corpuscles, 

 and most probably far more, so that such a system 

 when slightly disturbed would admit of many quali- 

 ties which ordinary atoms would not be expected to 

 possess. Assimilation, the power of replacing electrons 

 which have been emitted, may be one of these pro- 



