196 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



favour of the doctrine of the generation of life de 

 novo. 



Professor J. Arthur Thomson has emphasised the 

 theory that protoplasm may even at the present 

 day be slowly forming, but in very small quantities, 

 too small indeed to be perceived. He is, however, 

 in no way dogmatic on the subject, believing, as he 

 does, that the facts within the knowledge of the 

 biologist are insufficient. 



Haeckel is another great believer in the doctrine 

 of spontaneous generation, chiefly on account of the 

 bodies he has called monera, which he regards as 

 the lowest forms of organisms although, as we 

 have said, they are really probably far more 

 complex in their nature than has been supposed. 

 He bases his belief on the fact also that highly 

 complex organic compounds can be synthesised 

 from inorganic bodies. These bodies, to which 

 Bathybius was said to belong, called by him the 

 protistse, are supposed to constitute the border- 

 line, so to speak, between the organic and the 

 inorganic and a kingdom in itself higher in the 

 scale of being than the mineral kingdom and the 

 link between it and the vegetable one. 



The various types of monera, however, have 

 been found to fit in with other groups of higher 

 structure, and although forced, as he seems to have 

 been, to abandon the kingdom of protistse, he still 

 maintains that monera correspond to the most 

 primitive or most elementary forms of life which 

 arose when water was condensed upon the surface 

 of the earth. 



