‘ORIGIN OF LIFE. 19 
favourable for the growth are also favourable for 
the origination of crystalline matter, we are com- 
pelled to admit that growth may be determined 
under certain conditions where origination does not 
occur, and that the presence of pre-existing crystalline 
matter favours the process. And a distinction of 
the same kind undoubtedly obtains in the case of 
living matter. We know quite positively that 
although Bacteria will not originate in a previously- 
boiled ammonic tartrate solution, or ‘ Pasteur’s 
solution, that the addition of a few of these 
organisms (all other conditions remaining the same) 
to either one of the solutions will soon occasion a very 
considerable growth of the living matter of which 
Bacteria are composed.* Weare thus reduced to ask, 
whether the influence of the pre-existing nucleus is 
relatively more potent or more necessary in the 
case of living matter than it is in the case 
of crystalline matter? And this is a question which 
unfortunately we are unable definitely to answer: 
such minute quantitative and qualitative distinctions 
cannot be made. But so long as we have no positive 
knowledge on this subject, we surely have little 
right to infer that processes both of origination and 
of growth continue in the case of crystalline matter, 
and that the process of growth alone survives in the 
* The Beginnings of Life, vol. i. p. 325. 
