34 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



biology has been so prolific. Life we are told must have 

 originated, since the conditions on our earth were 

 certainly such as precluded the possibility of organisms. 

 But is it not possible dimly to imagine life as existing 

 in any conditions where energy transformations could 

 take the opposite direction from those that we see in inert 

 matter? If living substance passes into non-living 

 substance, as we indeed daily see it pass, the opposite 

 change must be postulated : so Weismann teaches. But 

 all the experience of physics is that energy transforma- 

 tions are irreversible and if we base our physiology purely 

 on physics, the transition of the living into the non-living 

 affords no reason for postulating that the reverse transition 

 may occur. Professor Schafer sees no reason to doubt 

 I hat the formation of living substance is possible at the 

 present day apparently by the employment of methods 

 which will be those of physics and chemistry. But all 

 these methods involve processes the direction of which is 

 the opposite of those which characterise an essential phase 

 of the cycle of energy changes in the organism. How, 

 then, could their employment produce a substance 

 behaving like the cells of a plant ? In all these sugges- 

 tions we see the influence of the false analogy of the 

 organism with the physico-chemical mechanism. The 

 problem is, of course, not in any way a transcendental one ; 

 that is, it is not inconceivable that living substance might 

 be " artificially " produced. But we ought to see clearly 

 that such a "synthesis " would be effected in some other 

 way than by the methods of physical chemistry. 

 Intellectually we must remain ignorant of the nature of 

 life, since the human intellect is bound down to the 

 consideration of space and materiality. But the fringe 

 of intuition that surrounds intellect is part of the move- 

 ment of life, and through intuition we may attempt to 

 know life. 



