ON THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 



227 



should be suggested by them. It is never contradictory to facts. 

 Huxley well says that, if a hypothesis be' in contradiction to a single 

 known fact, that hypothesis must " go." The hypothesis of " spon- 

 taneous generation " is in contradiction to a known fact of science, 

 namely, that when all air is excluded, and no germs permitted to 

 enter, the living organisms do not appear. Therefore, the hypothesis 

 of " spontaneous generation " should "go"; science demands that 

 it be abandoned. Life can make use of and direct physical and 

 chemical forces, but it is distinct from them. They can be 

 measured and transmuted. Life cannot. Its unique character 

 evidences itself also in the direction and regulation of the move- 

 ments of bioplasm, and in the processes of assimilation and 

 dissimilation, nutrition and growth, development and reproduction ; 

 in its action with regard to enantiomorphs (as pointed out by 

 Professor Japp), and in the formation of an excess of antitoxin 

 substances against proteid poisons. 



The author seems in doubt as to whether Lord Kelvin's meteoric 

 hypothesis was, or was not, a jest. I had it, however, on 

 the authority of Sir George Stokes, at that time our honoured 

 President and a close personal friend of Lord Kelvin, that the 

 supposition was really put forward as a joke. Sir George's own 

 view was that all life is originated by the action of Spirit. I think 

 this view will hold the field. Does not the Christian religion throw 

 light on the origin of life when it tells us that " the Spirit gives 

 life," and that eternal life is heart-knowledge of God and of Jesus 

 Christ whom He has sent to us 1 



Mr. M. L. KousE, B.A., M.R. A.C., said : The following conclusion 

 and illustration found in a very recent scientific work will show how 

 inscrutable a force is life, and how it exists before the tissue is 

 formed by means of which it afterwards works throughout the 

 career of the living creature. Mr. G. P. Mudge (F.Z.S., etc.), in 

 his text-book of zoology, at p. 14 (ed. 1901), writes : — 



"It is rather the nature of the forces at play that determine the 

 structure of an organ than the structure of an organ that prescribes 

 its activity. The beating heart of a three-day chick is actively 

 contractile ; but it contains not a trace of muscle fibre ; the structure 

 is absent, but the activity is present." 



I remember well about thirty years ago reading the report of 

 a lecture by Huxley upon crystallization, in which he used such 



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