200 Spiritual Evolution of Society 



respect, we hold that this is burking the whole question. 

 It only means that experimental demonstration of the 

 origin of life de novo — of spontaneous generation — is 

 impossible. But why cannot we boil a watery solution 

 or compound, containing all the elements and salts 

 previously mentioned, without so altering them that it 

 becomes impossible to generate living organisms from 

 them, if such is one of the processes of nature ? More- 

 over, all these elements in watery solution, which, we 

 are told, in the process of evolution brought life upon 

 the earth, had been subjected to far greater heat than 

 that of boiling water, and yet they combined fortuit- 

 ously under certain influences, radium, sunlight, or 

 other unknown medium, or by a purely chemical and 

 physical transmutation, and formed vital protoplasm, 

 originating the lowest order of the biological scale of 

 beings — the Protista, or Protozoa. If the only answer 

 to this argument is that the process was so slow, and 

 that long periods of time were required, then of course 

 it is impossible for the chemist ever to demonstrate the 

 method. So that we are exactly where we were ; and 

 observed phenomena compel us to our original con- 

 clusion of a special creative " intervention in the first 

 production of life." 



He goes on to suggest that the evolution of life may 

 have occurred more than once, but points out that in 

 this case the geological record would reveal more than 

 one geological series, and he continues : " Indeed, had 

 the idea of the possibility of a multiple evolution of 

 living substance been first in the field, I doubt if the 

 prevalent belief regarding a single fortuitous pro- 

 duction of life upon the globe would have become 

 established among biologists — so much are we liable to 

 be influenced by the impressions we receive in scientific 

 childhood." It is conceived as quite possible that the 

 evolution of non-living into living substance may be 



