THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



A different attitude from this irrational positive super- 

 stition is the sceptical view of those scientists who 

 regard the question of the origin of life as insoluble or 

 transcendental. Darwin and Virchow are representa- 

 tives of this agnostic position ; they held that we know 

 nothing, and can know nothing, about the origin of the 

 first organisms. Darwin, for instance, explains in his 

 chief work that he "has nothing to do with the origin of 

 the fundamental spiritual forces, or with that of life 

 itself." This is a complete abandonment of the task of 

 solving a scientific problem which must present as def- 

 inite a subject of inquiry to modern research as any 

 other evolutionary problem. The origin of life on our 

 planet represents a fixed point in its history. However, 

 there is nothing to be said if a scientist chooses to make 

 no inquiry into it. A number of distinguished modem 

 scientists maintain this agnostic attitude ; they are more 

 or less convinced that the origin of life is a natural process, 

 but believe we have not as yet the means to explain it. 



Different, again, is a third attitude which regards the 

 problem of the origin of life as extremely difficult, yet 

 capable of solution. This is the position of Dubois- 

 Reymond, for instance, who counts the origin of life 

 as the third great cosmic problem. Most of the modern 

 scientists who have worked on the problem are of this 

 opinion, although their views as to the way of solving it 

 differ very much. We are confronted, in the first place, 

 with two essentially different views which we may call 

 the eternity-hypothesis and the theory of archigony 

 (or spontaneous generation). According to the first 

 view, organic life is eternal; according to the second, 

 it began at a definite point of time. The eternity- 

 hypothesis has assumed two very different forms, one 

 of which has a dualistic and the other a monistic base. 

 Helmholtz is a representative of the former theory, and 

 Preyer of the latter. 



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