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PALEONTOLOGICAL GEOLOGY 
A vitalistic hypothesis for the origin of life, as protoplasmic 
organisms on the Earth, might be stated about as follows: The 
Earth at one time became perfectly symmetrical, geometrically, 
so that the sea and air, each spread over it in uniformity. On the 
surface of the sea, by combination of vital element and material 
elements, a single variety of protoplasmic life arose ab initio, in 
uniformity. By willful migration to the sunny equatorial zone, 
and, then by the precipitation of lime from the sea-water, some 
shallows and islands were built up. Those chalky masses, by 
weight, as it increased, disturbed the isostatic condition of the 
lithosphere, and thus started those diastrophic movements and 
volcanic outbursts that have built up the mountains and lands, 
dividing the seas, and in short making those physical differences 
on which the traced evolution of life known to us has so largely 
depended. It may be said, too, that the obvious difficulty for us, 
to define characteristics of a vital element when not in combination 
with matter, need not deter us because we have the combination 
with material elements in the traced evolution as well as in all 
living things, to define it. 
Whether such a vitalistic theory is exactly true or not need not 
be stressed. It expresses more adequately and seems more truly 
the relation of living things to the earth and it to them than 
biologists are accustomed to do. The very intimate relation of 
living things on the Earth; to the earth’s geometrical asymmetry 
is so obvious to a paleontologist that he might further suspect, 
very reasonably, some vitalistic significance in a general asym¬ 
metrical feature to the typically symmetrical material universe, as 
a whole in case he happens to be looking that way. The moun¬ 
tains on the Moon suggest fossils whether they are there or not. 
It seems to me nearly equally difficult to understand how the 
Moon can have either volcanoes or organic life unless there is or 
was water and air there, since the volcanoes of the Earth are said 
to be essentially steam-explosions. Until the quantitative rela¬ 
tions of living things to both mountains and volcanos of the Earth 
have been calculated back to their time of origin, it may be too 
soon to say what the life on the Moon is or has been. In the 
meanwhile it may be fair, however, to keep an open mind as to the 
possibility of such things as Trilunabite and Lunaceras. 
Sarddson 
