paleontological geology 
333 
sume that life originated on the Earth more than once. Living 
things are also environmentally a unit. Considering, then, the 
origin of protoplasmic life on Earth, the idea of spontaneous gen¬ 
eration from inorganic matter is precluded by now existing cir¬ 
cumstances, geologically. Life centres, as to environmental con¬ 
ditions, around the niveau where earth, water and air meet, and 
it ranges out towards the extremes of physical conditions but 
not to the extremities of it, — not into the volcano's fire, nor 
the glacier’s ice, nor the outer air, nor the ocean’s middle depth nor 
the solid earth’s interior. Life on the earth occupies a common¬ 
place, or median, position on the Earth’s surface, and also with 
relation to geologic processes. It evidently always has, and, 
since no condition of the earth appears possible to be mentioned 
which existed once that does not exist now, then if life arose ah 
initio from inorganic particles once it must have continued to do so 
even until now, for geologic reasons. Logical conclusion is that 
life is accordingly as old as the planet is, or else that it arrived 
from somewhere. 
Further, so long as Pasteur’s demonstration holds true, that 
spontaneous generation does not take place on Earth now, and we 
have no geologic reason for thinking that there was any * 
better chance in the past for such an event, some other hypothesis 
appears called for. At any rate, there is need of a geologic vitalis- 
tic theory for the origin of protoplasmic life on the Earth. 
Such a vital geologic theory may proceed simply from the cir¬ 
cumstances that living things compose one of the major geologic 
processes. Life aids in the building up of islands and the filling 
of the seas. Further, also, organisms are intimately dependent 
upon the geometrically unsymmetrical condition of the solid earth 
by which it is pushed up in part through the hydrosphere into the 
atmosphere. If the lithosphere of the Earth were a perfect 
spheroid, we understand, with the ocean and the air equally deep 
and uniform around it, there could be none of the now living 
plants on it — and hence of course none of the animals. They 
are wholly adapted to the Earth’s unsymmetry, and they do in 
fact help to maintain it. Only the simplest of all protoplasmic 
life could exist without it. The origin of living things and the 
origin of the geometrical unsymmetry of the lithosphere are ac¬ 
cordingly with reason to be considered as closely related. 
