THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



Hermann Eberhard Richter put forward, in 1865, the 

 hypothesis that infinite space is full throughout of the 

 germs of living things, just as it is of inorganic bodies; 

 both of them are in a condition of eternal development. 

 When the ubiquitous germs reach a mature and habita- 

 ble cosmic .body, which possesses heat and moisture in 

 the proper degrees for their development, they break 

 into life, and may lead to the formation of a whole world 

 of living things. Richter conceives these ubiquitous 

 germs as living cells, and formulates the principle: 

 Omne vivum ab cBternitate e cellula (Every living thing is 

 eternal and from a cell). In much the same way the 

 botanist Anton Kerner postulates the eternity of organic 

 life and its complete independence of the inorganic 

 world. But the difficulties encountered by this hypoth- 

 esis, in the indefinite form that Kerner gives it, are so 

 great and so obvious that his theory has won no rec- 

 ognition. 



However, the "cosmozoic hypothesis" attained a 

 great popularity when it was afterwards taken up by two 

 of the most distinguished physicists, Hermann Helm- 

 holtz and Sir W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin). Helmholtz 

 formulated the alternative thus (in 1884)': "Organic life 

 either came into existence at a certain period, or it is 

 eternal. ' ' He declared for the latter view, on the ground 

 that we have not succeeded in producing living organisms 

 by artificial means. He supposes that the meteors that 

 roam about the universe might contain the germs of 

 organisms, and, under favorable conditions, these might 

 reach the earth or other planets and develop thereon. 

 This cosmozoic hypothesis of Helmholtz is untenable, 

 because the physical features of space (the extreme 

 temperatures, the absolute dryness, the absence of atmos- 

 phere, etc.) exclude the lasting existence of plasm on 

 meteorites in the form of organic germs with a capacity 

 to live. The hypothesis is, moreover, logically useless, 



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