ORIGIN OF LIFE. 23 
growing freely all. over the earth under the most 
diverse conditions as regards temperature, seems 
very difficult to believe. Yet no other suggestion 
is offered in explanation of an assumption which 
seems essentially unscientific. For the assumption 
that Archebiosis took place only in the remote 
past puts this process on a gas? miraculous level, 
and tends to assimilate it to an act of special 
creation, the very notion of which Mr. Spencer, in 
other cases, resolutely rejects. 
Again, what reason does Professor Huxley give, in 
explanation of his supposition as to the present non- 
‘occurrence of Archebiosis? He says,* if it were given 
to him “to look beyond the abyss of geologically re- 
corded time” to a still more remote period of the 
earth’s history, he would expect “to be a witness to 
the evolution of living protoplasm from not-living 
matter.” And the only reason distinctly implied why 
a similar process should not occur at the present day, 
is because the physical and chemical conditions of the 
earth’s surface were different in the past from what 
they are now. And yet, concerning the exact nature 
of these differences, or the degree in which the dif- 
ferent sets of conditions would respectively favour the 
occurrence or arrest of an evolution of living matter, 
Professor Huxley cannot possess even the vaguest 
* Nature, Sep. 15, 1870, p. 404. 
