21 8 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



given out in the earlier stages of the cell's 

 career. In the course of time, however, there 

 will be a balance, and the growth of the cell 

 will cease. The substance in the nucleus will go 

 on increasing assuming that it is like an emanation, 

 so that the nucleus will in the course of time 

 reproduce, and this in turn will increase in size 

 and produce a strain within the cell of the kind 

 it observed in the phenomena of karyokinesis. It 

 will thus force the sub-division of the cell, the 

 newly formed nucleus being the nucleus of the 

 newly formed cell. And this in turn can again 

 repeat the same process. 



If the charge of the nucleus changes sign, as 

 might easily happen if an excess of ions of the 

 charge opposite to that which it originally had 

 gathered round it, then the cell should begin to 

 part with some of the substance which it had 

 absorbed. Nay, more, if the radiation from the 

 nucleus ceases, metabolism of the cell will in the 

 course of time cease too, as in the case of phos- 

 phorescent bodies and the flow of matter stopping, 

 the cell would degenerate and ultimately die. In 

 other words, we should observe a complete cyclic 

 process with reproduction in such artificial cells. 

 Such metabolism with nutritive properties is what 

 cells possess. 



Still, such artificial cells would be merely models 

 of the natural ones. We should not have suflicient 

 reason to suppose that the actual metabolism or 

 chemical changes which take place within them are 



