224 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



difficulty which seemed to weigh so heavily upon 

 Clerk Maxwell's mind. Such systems, on account 

 of their ultra-atomic nature, like the radio-active 

 elements, may withstand a considerable temperature. 

 So that the sun itself should contain such bio- 

 elements as our planet doubtless did in the remote 

 past, the almost dead elements or chemical atoms 

 being the last remnants of such magnificent 

 systems of aggregation and of motion. 



This theory, which is probably quite new, is the 

 inference which analogy, extrapolation, and experi- 

 mental results have led us to draw. 



We thus regard the ultimate vital substance 

 which seems to play so mysterious a part in the 

 phenomena of nature as corresponding to a state 

 of matter which should be described as neither 

 molecular nor atomic, but of matter in the process 

 of being ; a state of electronic aggregation from 

 which matter in the course of time has been 

 evolved, the hiatus, the borderland or critical state 

 between disintegrated and integrated electricity. 

 In fact, if we regard electrons in the free state as 

 gaseous electricity and electrons condensed into 

 atoms as solid electricity, then biogens or vital 

 substances would correspond to electricity, or 

 electrons in the ill-defined state between them. 

 And the varieties of motion and aggregation of 

 which they admit have thus their counterparts in 

 the combination of which atoms and molecules 

 admit. Thus in the various scales of being, from 

 solar systems to molecular and atomic ones, down 



