THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



or archigony. They start from the following points: 

 I. Organic life is everywhere bound up with the plasm 

 (or protoplasm), a chemical substance of a viscous char- 

 acter, having albuminous matter and water as its chief 

 constituents. 2. The characteristic movements of this 

 living substance, to which we give the name of organic 

 life, are physical and chemical processes, that can only 

 take place within certain limits of temperature (between 

 the freezing-point and boiling-point of water). 3. Be- 

 yond these limits organic life may in certain circum- 

 stances be maintained for a time in a latent condition 

 (apparent death, potential life) ; but this latent condi- 

 tion is restricted to a certain (and generally short) peri- 

 od. 4. As the earth, like all the other planets, was for 

 a long time in a state of incandescence, at a temperature 

 of several thousand degrees, living organisms (viscous 

 albuminoids) cannot possibly have existed on it, and so 

 cannot be eternal. 5. Fluid water, the first condition 

 for the appearance of organic life, cannot have formed 

 on it until the crust at the surface had fallen below boil- 

 ing-point. 6. The chemical processes which first set in 

 at this stage of development must have been catalyses, 

 which led to the formation of albuminous combinations, 

 and eventually of plasm. 7. The earliest organisms to 

 be thus formed can only have been plasmodomous mo- 

 nera, structureless organisms without organs; the first 

 forms in which the living matter individualized were 

 probably homogeneous globules of plasm, like certain of 

 the actual chromacea (chroococcus). 8. The first cells 

 were developed secondarily from these primitive monera, 

 by separation of the central caryoplasm (nucleus) and 

 peripheral cytoplasm (cell-body). 



The monistic hypothesis of abiogenesis, or autogony 

 (= self -development) in the strictly scientific sense of 

 the word, was first formulated by me in 1866 in the 

 second book of the General Morphology. The solid 



341 



