7 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to have occurred at " a time when the heat of the earth's surface was 

 falling through those ranges of temperature at which the higher or- 

 ganic compounds are unstable," than at the present day. Why such 

 conditions would be more favorable than those now existing Mr. Spen- 

 cer does not say; and that such an alteration should suffice to put a 

 stop to Archebiosis, although we see living matter still growing freely 

 all over the earth under the most diverse conditions as regards tem- 

 perature, seems very difficult to believe. Yet no other suggestion is 

 offered in explanation of an assumption which seems essentially unsci- 

 entific. For the assumption that Archebiosis took place only in the 

 remote past puts this process on a quasi 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 Prof. 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 geologi- 

 cally-recorded time," to a still more remote period of the earth's his- 

 tory, he would expect " to be a witness to the evolution of living proto- 

 plasm from non-living matter." And the only reason distinctly im- 

 plied 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, concern- 

 ing the exact nature of these differences, and the degree in which the 

 different sets of conditions would respectively favor the occurrence or 

 arrest of an evolution of living matter, Prof. Huxley cannot possess 

 even the vaguest knowledge. He chooses to assume that the un- 

 known conditions existing in the past were more favorable to Arche- 

 biosis than those now in operation. This, however, is a mere assump- 

 tion which may be entirely opposed to the facts. It is useless, of 

 course, to argue upon such a subject, but still it might fairly be said, 

 in opposition to his assumption of the impotency of present telluric 

 conditions, that the abundance of dead organic matter now existing in 

 a state of solution would seem to afford a much more easy starting- 

 point for life-evolution than could have existed in that remote past, 

 when no living matter had previously been formed, and consequently 

 when no dead organic matter, thence derived, could have been diffused 

 over the earth's surface. 2 



Prof. Huxley is, however, very inconsistent, since, in spite of his 

 declared expectation of witnessing the evolution of living from lifeless 

 matter, if it were given him " to look beyond the abyss of geologically- 

 recorded time," he had said, scarcely five minutes before, in reference 

 to experimental evidence bearing upon the present occurrence of a 



1 Nature, September 15, 1870, p. 404. 



2 This is a consideration of great importance, since those who believe that Archebio- 

 sis occurs in organic solutions at the present day have not yet professed to show that it 

 can occur in saline solutions free from all traces of organic matter. 



