Organisms And Their Origin

( Originally Published 1909 )

The Variety of Living Creatures.—The earth has come to be tenanted by practically countless hosts of living creatures, whose ranks are continually being thinned, and continually being recruited. There are legions upon legions of species, that is to say, different kinds of living creatures groups of individualities, worthy of a specific name, because they differ more from the nearest group than brothers or cousins differ from one an-other, and because they breed true with their own kind. What a motley assemblage it is! There are plants so minute, e. g., the Bacteria, that many can hang on the point of a needle; there are the hyssops on the wall and the cedars of Lebanon. There are animals so minute, e. g., the Trypanosome of Sleeping Sickness, that we require our best microscope to see them, and there are the gigantic Saurians of by-gone ages, and the still surviving giants like the elephants and the giraffes and the great whales. The simplest organisms are single cells invisible units of living matter; the more complex are vast cities of cells with millions of component units. What variety of habitat there is; their lines are gone over all the earth. The explorers find no corner where life has not outrun them. Nansen found minute living creatures in ice pools in the Farthest North; the Natural History of the Antarctic already fills several large volumes. On the earth and under the earth; in all the waters high and low; on the mountain tops and in the great abysses of the deep sea; free in the air and fettered in the penetralia of other creatures, life abounds. What a long gamut of activity there is, from the dull sentience of many of the simplest, which seem sometimes to have no more than one distinct action or reaction, and the sleep-life of the higher plants, to the complex instinctive routine of ants and bees, and the intelligent behavior familiar to us in the big-brained educable birds and mammals. How difficult it is to find what is essentially characteristic of them all as distinguished from the inanimate creation. But that is what we must now try to do.

Characteristics of Livingness.—The great oak is instinct with life in every leaf and twig and root-let, it is a whirlpool of whirlpools of intensely active corpuscles, yet it outlives many generations of men, and stands, like the tree of Igdrasil, as an emblem of eternal life. What a contrast to the earth beneath our feet, which we usually call "lifeless." But a flash comes from a passing cloud, and the oak is dead. Where is our clear contrast now? We watch a bird flying overhead: "it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it." What a contrast to the stone beneath our feet, which we usually call "inert"! But the stone is thrown, and the bird falls dead. Where is our clear contrast now ? A slight blow on the back of the head, and what we call "life," where is it ? It is extremely difficult to find an absolute criterion between what once was living and what now is dead. In many cases, we can obviously say of the killed creature that its machinery is shattered; in other cases, we can only say that the wheels have ceased to go round. A few hours ago the eggs of that bird were living intensely living in her nest, but the bird is dead and the eggs are growing cold. Life is slipping away. Take them still and hatch them in the incubator, and you will soon see how really living they are. Take them next day and you might as well take stones. Professor Waller says there is an electrical "blaze reaction" which will infallibly tell us whether the "vital spark" has gone out in the forsaken egg or in the wind-blown seed, but we do not know much about it. The sure test of livingness or non-livingness is, of course, in results.

Puzzling Phenomena.—The phenomena of "latent life" are very puzzling, and deserving of far more attention than they have as yet received. The dried seed may remain alive without detectable signs of life for several decennia (though not since the time of Pharaoh, as used to be said). Certain little threadworms (Anguillulidae) may be kept dry without any discernible hint of life for fourteen years, and yet become vigorous again when put into water. At any time during the four-teen years this revivification may occur, but not in the fifteenth year! What is life that it can remain so long without asserting itself and yet without dying? It would be interesting to arrange on a long inclined plane all the phenomena of anaesthesia, narcotization, sleep, coma, suspended animation, fainting, trance, catalepsy, and dying in man; all the phenomena of death-feigning, animal hypnosis, paralysis, hibernation, latent life, and dying in animals. The phenomena of local life are also remarkable. The excised turtle's heart may go on beating for many days after the animal has been made into soup. We speak of shattering the ma-chine, but a decapitated turtle has been known to walk about. Living, we say, means a consensus of all the living parts, and yet a part may be as good as the whole. In the case of hundreds of plants, a small fragment carefully nursed will re-grow the perfect organism, and the same is true of fairly complex animals, such as sponges and polyps and worms. From ono Turbellarian worm.

cut into twelve pieces, twelve complete worms may be obtained. We must also recall that the potentiality of the whole life lies in a microscopic germ-cell, and may be unrealized for years. A complete inheritance, rich in initiatives, endowed with the gains of past ages, may be condensed in a microscopic egg-shell and in a sperm-cell 100,000 times smaller. Moreover, the experimental embryologists have shown us that, unity as the germ-cell is, a part may be as good as the whole. One egg may give rise to twins, or triplets, or quadruplets, or even to many perfect embryos. From one-thirty-seventh of the egg of a sea-urchin Prof. Yves Delage reared an embryo able to live for some time. All this, and much more, must be borne in mind when we think of the characteristics of livingness.

Although no one is wise enough to tell completely what is meant by the simple word alive, there may be utility in trying to state some of the characteristic features of living organisms.

From the Chemist's Point of View. Looking at organisms from the chemist's point of view, we see that the physical basis of life invariably includes those carbon-compounds known as proteids, which are among the most complex kinds of matter in the world. The component elements of living creatures are just the common elements found in their surroundings, but the make-up of the organic compounds is very intricate. Thus the elements which enter into the composition of a proteid are Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Sulphur, but the chemical formula of the proteid known as white of egg is C204 H322-N52 O66, S2. The living body contains such a mixture of these complex compounds that we cannot put our finger on any one kind of stuff and say : This is protoplasm or living matter and nought else. It may be that there is an essentially important kind of substance which acts like a ferment on the complex cellular materials brought within its sphere of influence, but it is more probable that there is no one substance which should be called protoplasm. It seems likely that living matter is a mixture (certainly no jumble!) of proteids and other highly complex substances, owing its virtue to their coöperative interaction, just as the secret of a firm's success may depend not on any one partner by himself, but on their combination of talents.

Although we cannot analyze living matter, nor thoroughly interpret all the changes of mate-rial implied in living, we can trace some of the chains of chemical sequence. We can follow the food through various transformations till it be-comes part and parcel of the living body; we can catch the waste products formed during activity the ashes of the living fire we know that there is a twofold process of building up and breaking down, of winding up and running down, of construction and disruption, and we know much in regard to important processes of fermentation that go on much more, indeed, than we understand. We are in the position of visitors to some great manufactory who are permitted to see the raw materials passing in, some stages in their trans-formation, and the finished products passing out, but who are not allowed entrance to the "secret room" where the gist of the business is hidden.

When more is known in regard to the chemistry of the living body, it may be possible to bring the changes into better line with those which occur in inorganic things and in the laboratory with organic things, but meanwhile we cannot redescribe the activity of the living creature in terms of chemical formulae,1 unless we throw away the child with or the bath, as the Germans say, and ignore the most salient fact, that all the manifold processes are somehow correlated and centralized in a unified behavior and in purpose-like agency. Even the simplest organism is a higher unity than a whirl-pool or a nebula in being a creative individuality.

From the Physicist's Point of View.—From the physicist's point of view, the living organism resembles, as we have already said, some wonderful kind of engine. It is a material system adapted to transform matter and energy, but it differs from any man-made machine in its greater efficiency, and in this, that the transfer of energy into it is attended with effects conducive to further transfer and retardative of dissipation, and in this, that it is a self-stoking, self-repairing, self-preservative, self-adjusting, self-increasing, self-reproducing engine. A linotype type-setting machine, for instance, is a most marvellous contrivance, but, after all, it does not grow from a piece of iron, though there is not much more in it, and it does not give rise to other linotype machines. In many ways, however, the living creature is like a machine, and when we think of the resemblances we should always remember that a machine is hardly a fair sample of the inorganic world, since in addition to the forces of the inorganic world it has inside of it a human thought. It is a materialized human idea, just as a picture is.

The time may come who shall say when we shall see the phenomena of organic life in better line with those of the inanimate world, but at present it is idle to deny that the activities of living creatures are things apart. Certain physical phenomena of surface-tension, of diffusion, of elasticity, of hydrostatics, of thermodynamics, of electricity, are detected, but not even the simplest vital activity can be completely redescribed in terms of physical formulas. Even the passage of digested food from the alimentary canal to the blood-vessels is more than ordinary physical osmosis; it is modified by the fact that the cells are living. When we add up the components revealed by chemical and physical analysis, they do not amount to the whole resultant.

From the Biologist's Point of View.—(a) Growth.

Leaving the chemical and physical standpoint, we note from the biologist's point of view that the living organism grows after a fashion all its own, not as a rolling snowball grows by mere accretion, but by a unifying incorporation; not even as a crystal grows, at the expense of dissolved material chemically the same as itself, but at the expense of material quite different from itself. The grass grows at the expense of air, water, and salts, which, with the sun's aid, it lifts into the circle of life; and at the expense of the grass after a period of maternal gastric education the foal grows into a horse. It should be remembered, however, that the growth of crystals and the growth of certain minerals is no mere increase in bulk, but is, like organic growth, an integration, and results in forms of often startling beauty.

(b) Cyclical Development. Another familiar characteristic of living things is their cyclical development. From a microscopic egg-cell a seed develops, from the seed a seedling, from the seed-ling a beanstalk. "By insensible steps, the plant builds itself up into a large and various fabric of root, stem, leaves, flowers, and fruit, every one moulded within and without in accordance with an extremely complex, but, at the same time, minutely defined pattern. In each of these complicated structures, as in their smallest constituents, there is an immanent energy, which, in harmony with that resident in all the others, incessantly works toward the maintenance of the whole and efficient performance of the part it has to play in the economy of nature. But no sooner has the edifice, reared with such exact elaboration, attained completeness, than it begins to crumble. By degrees, the plant withers and disappears from view, leaving behind more or few apparently inert and simple bodies, just like the bean from which it sprang; and like it endowed with the potentiality of giving rise to a similar cycle of manifestations." 1 It is a "Sisyphaean process, in the course of which the living and growing plant passes from the relative simplicity and latent potentiality of the seed to the full epiphany of a highly differentiated type, thence to fall back to simplicity and potentiality."2

So it is among animals. The microscopic germ-cell divides and redivides, differentiates and integrates into an embryo, the embryo may become a larva, which undergoes metamorphosis and be-comes adolescent, or the embryo may steadily grow into a miniature of the mature organism. Sooner or later, in any case, the adolescent becomes the adult. But when this ascent from a vita minima at the beginning has reached the vita maxima of the full-grown organism, there begins to be a reversal of the process. A limit of growth is reached, reproduction occurs, and reproduction is often the beginning of death. The wear and tear of daily life is not perfectly compensated for, physiological arrears accumulate, the creature gets into debt, and there is a quick or slow descent to the vita minima of senescence, ending in natural death, if violent death has not previously intervened. We can make curves representative of the various kinds of life-history, some with a very rapid ascent and a slow descent, some with a slow ascent and a very rapid descent, some with a long period of maturity, some, as of the May-flies, with an almost abrupt apex. But always there is the same general phenomenon of cyclical development. For the life of the organism is very different from the path of a rocket in the air, returning spent to the level whence it rose, very different from the course of the drops of water in a fountain, which rise to the summit, sparkle a moment in the sunlight, and sink again to earth. The fact of reproduction makes an essential difference. In all but the simplest organisms, part of the growing germ gives rise to the body, but part remains unaltered and forms the germ-cells for another generation. The body perishes, but the germ-cells live on. Individual organisms are pendants that fall off an immortal lineage of germ-cells. Huxley compared the state of affairs to what might occur if a strawberry plant had an endlessly growing "sucker" or stolon, rooting here and there, and forming transient strawerry plants, but itself always pushing on, undying.

Of all vital phenomena, except those of evolution itself, and those wrapped up with intelligence, the processes of individual development are the most impressive in relation to the question of mechanistic and vitalistic interpretation.' The physiology of development is still in its infancy, and we shall doubtless be able in the future to understand better how one stage leads to another, but at present the whole process, so obviously continuous, is mysterious and baffling. We cannot picture how the hereditary qualities maternal, paternal, and ancestral lie in potentia in the microscopic fertilized egg-cell; we know very little regarding the stimulus that sets the process agoing, though Professor Loeb's striking experiments on artificial parthenogenesis are beginning to throw some light on the problem; we do not understand the orderly, correlated, regulated succession of events which leads from apparent simplicity to obvious complexity. We do not wonder at Sir Thomas Browne writing in his "Religio Medici": "Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in silk-worms turned my philosophy into divinity. There is in these works of nature, which seem to puzzle reason, something divine; and bath more in it than the eye of a common spectator doth discover." We do not wonder at Dr. Hans Driesch, one of the foremost and certainly the most philosophical of experimental embryologists, entitling one of his books, "The Soul as a Factor in Nature."

(c) Effective Response. Furthermore, the living organism is characterized by its power of effective response. There is response also in the inanimate, the bar of iron responds to heat, its particles have a quicker motion, and it expands; it responds like-wise to the moist air and rusts, turning into oxide of iron. The barrel of gunpowder certainly responds to the spark, it explodes, destroying itself as gunpowder in so doing. But the responses of the living creature in normal surroundings are effective, they are self-preservative, they usually make for betterment. There is wastage, of course; there can be no activity without that; but the organism has a remarkable power of retaining its integrity, for days or years. We throw a piece of potassium on the basin of water, and it rushes about fizzing and flaring like a thing possessed, but in a minute all its activity is over. It goes out. On the other hand, we watch the movements of the whirligig beetle on the pool; it darts like a little water-sprite here, there, and everywhere over the surface, but, unlike the potassium pill, it does not go out. When it is tired, it takes a rest, and so it goes on for weeks and months, and, if it gets big rests, for years. When its energies flag, it feeds, and recuperates itself. When danger threatens, it seeks its hiding-place. Its life is full of effective responses, and not the least important or marvellous is the power of taking a rest.

(d) Unified Behavior. This naturally leads on to a recognition of the general fact that the living creature has a unified activity, which is usually worthy of being called behavior. In his " Cray-fish "—one of the best introductions to the study of zoology Huxley compared the organism to a whirlpool, such as one may see below the Niagara Falls, which is always changing and yet always remaining the same. Amid ceaseless flux it retains a remarkable sameness. And truly, the living organism is like a whirlpool a system within a system; streams of matter and energy are continually passing in and as continually passing out; and yet the unity persists. But the comparison does not sufficiently bring out what is so essentially characteristic of the organism, that all its changes are correlated in such a way that persistent unified behavior is in most cases possible.

Our familiarity with plant organisms may raise a difficulty, for their whole life seems rounded with a sleep. Plants are continually converting the kinetic energy of the sunlight into the potential energy of complex stored products, while animals characteristically change potential energy into kinetic energy in locomotion and external work. Plants show a relative preponderance of constructive, upbuilding processes, and are hampered by the abundance of their riches. From another point of view, they are inhibited by their own internal waste-products, and slumber like hibernating animals, or like a fire too carefully banked up, half-smothered in its own ashes. But we probably under-appreciate the vegetative life. Al-though the lilies of the field neither toil nor spin, they are intensely active internally. Although plants do not walk about, many of them swim about. Young shoots move round in leisurely circles; the rootlets twist away from sharp edges, and on a piece of smoked glass they may be got to keep a diary of their daily movements; twining stems and tendrils bend and bow to the different points of the compass as they climb; leaves rise and sink, flowers open and close with the growing and waning light of day. In a large number of plants undeniable sense-organs are now known. Tendrils twine around the lightest threads, the leaves of the sensitive plant respond to a gentle touch, the tentacles of the sundew, the hairs of the fly-trap, the stamens of the rock-rose, the stigma of the musk, compare well with the sensitive and motile organs of many animals. They have some power, too, of profiting by experience. It is not unjustifiable to speak of the Venus Fly-trap as having a short memory.

We used to think, as many still think, of the activities of the simplest animals or Protozoa, in a somewhat dull way, translating them all into mere reflexes or tropisms. And no doubt there are re-flexes or tropisms, and this mode of interpretation must be pushed as far as it will go. But not further. For the careful work of Jennings, for instance, has shown us that these humble creatures sometimes exhibit what may be called the first hints of mind, at any rate, a pursuance of the method of trial and error. There is a selective behavior, such as we are ourselves continually exhibiting. The meaning of the term selective behavior may be illustrated by the story of a dog which was asked to carry a walking-stick with a crooked handle through a fence with close up-right bars. It took the stick by the middle and jammed; it tried again, but began at the wrong end of the stick and jammed again. Finally, it gripped the handle in its mouth and ran triumphantly through. Similarly, Darwin found that the earth-worms dealt in an effective way with the bifoliar spurs of the Scotch fir, and even with strange leaves of which they could have had no experience. Similarly, Jennings has found that some infusorians try one reaction after another, and select the one which is fit.

There seems a great deal to be said for the view that many of the activities in animals which we call mere reflexes, are, as it were, the degraded stages of activities which were to begin with self-determined or purposive profitably degraded, for the agent thus becomes freer to solve new problems. In so saying, however, we need not re-turn to the old and probably quite erroneous theory that "instincts" arose from "lapsed intelligence," which is a separate question. In any case we may agree that even simple actions of simple creatures illustrate what we must call unified behavior, which is effective and adaptive, directed by the creature itself. Even spermatozoa always swim against the stream. A self-acting, self-regulating, self-adjusting, self-preserving ma-chine is no longer a machine. As a unity the organism lives, as a unity it develops, as a unity it evolves.

We may refer here to the important discussion of the whole subject of organisms and their evolution, which is given by Professor Bergson in his illuminating book, "L'Evolution Créatrice." He points out that one of the reasons why we boggle so much over the puzzle of life is that our intelligence is most at home among mechanical things solids and their movements. It was trained in this school long before there was any philosophical biology. The organism bursts the categories of "mechanical causality" and the like which we try to force upon it.

Our own mental experience, which we know best, means continual change; from day to day we ripe and ripe; we are continually recreating our-selves, artists of our own life. So the organism has true experience and history, which a stone never has; there is persistence in spite of ceaseless change; there is a continual registration of the results of time, and there is continual creation. The organism's creativeness is incalculable, unpredictable; it uses time so as to profit by experience; it is continually making itself afresh. In its essential features it thus transcends mechanical description.

Origin of Organisms upon the Earth.—No one doubts that at some uncertain, but inconceivably distant date, living creatures appeared upon the earth, which had previously been tenantless. During the early phases of the earth's history, before it cooled and consolidated, the conditions were quite impossible for such organisms as we know, and there is no use talking about any other. The question is: What was the manner of the be-coming of living creatures upon the earth; and the answer is that we do not know. Our inquiry might close at this point, were it not that a number of less truthful answers have been given, were it not that a discussion of the subject may enable us to bring into greater prominence the essential insignia of livingness. Some apprehension or appreciation of these always colors our picture of Nature, though the dominant tone always depends on what we make of man himself. Let us first take a brief historical survey. Perhaps it is well to speak of the problem as the origin of living organ-isms, rather than of life. Life is an ambiguous and mysterious term. We do not know what life in its essence really implies. We may be begging the question in asking how "life" began. Life may be a particular mode of motion as old as other modes of motion such as heat or elasticity or matter. Or "life" may be in its essence inseparable from what we call "spirit." Therefore, to inquire into the origin of life may be like inquiring into the origin of motion or the origin of consciousness. But it is still too soon to say so.

Various Suggestions.—The first possible answer is that living organisms began after a fashion which we can never form any scientific conception of, that the origin of life is for science a quite in-soluble problem. This answer saves a lot of trouble, but the objection to it is that it is prematurely dogmatic, closing the door on legitimate scientific inquiry.

Secondly, Preyer and others have suggested that germs of life, confessedly unlike any we now know, may have existed from the beginning even in nebulous masses. It was not, indeed, the protoplasm we know that was encradled in the fire-mist; it was a kind of movement, a particular dance of corpuscles, different in its measures from in-organic dances. But there does not seem much utility in discussing a hypothetical kind of organism which could live in nebulae; our conception of organic life must be based on the organisms we know. It is interesting, however, to note that Preyer strongly opposed the view that organic sub-stance could arise or could have arisen from in-organic substance; the reverse supposition seemed to him more tenable.

As a corollary of the second answer we may notice the view that organisms came to the earth from elsewhere.

As far back as 1865, II. E. Richter started the idea that germs of life are continually being thrown off from the heavenly bodies, and that some of these found lodgment on the earth, when it was ready for them. For him, as for Preyer, it was impossible to think of life beginning; his dictum was, Omne vivum ab ceternitate e cellula. To Helmholtz (1884) and to Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) the same idea occurred, that germs of life may have come to the earth embosomed in meteorites. "I cannot contend," Helmholtz said, "against one who would regard this hypothesis as highly or wholly improbable. But it appears to me to be a wholly correct scientific procedure, when all our endeavors to produce organisms out of lifeless substance are thwarted, to question whether, after all, life has ever arisen, whether it may not be even as old as matter, and whether its germs, passed from one world to an-other, may not have developed where they found favorable soil. . . . The true alternative is evident: organic life has either begun to exist at some one time, or has existed from eternity." On the other hand, we may note that the word "eternal" is somewhat irrelevant in scientific discourse, that the notion of such complex substances as proteids (essentially involved in every organism we know) being primitive, is quite against the tenor of mod-ern theories of inorganic evolution; and that, though we cannot deny the possibility, it is difficult to conceive of anything like the protoplasm we know surviving transport in a meteorite through the intense cold in space and through intense heat when passing through our atmosphere. The milder form of the hypothesis associated with the name of Lord Kelvin was simply one of transport; he wisely said nothing about "eternal cells" or any such thing; he simply shifted the responsibility of the problem of the origin of living organ-isms off the shoulders of our planet.

Spontaneous Generation.—Apart from the abandonment of the problem as scientifically insoluble apart, that is to say, from the view that living creatures began to be in some way which we can-not hope to formulate in terms of the scientific "universe of discourse," we have the suggestions (a) that the physical basis of life is as old as the cosmos, and (b) that germs of organisms may have come from elsewhere to our earth. There is but one other possible view, namely, that what we call living evolved in Nature's laboratory from what we call not-living a view to which the trend of evolutionist thinking certainly attracts us. There are few living biologists 1 who doubt the present universality of the induction from all sufficiently careful experiment and observation-omne vivum e vivo; but it is quite another thing to say that abiogenesis may not have occurred in the past or may not occur in the future. The dictum omne vivum e vivo is a statement of empirical fact; it is not a dogmatic closing of the question.

It is perhaps useful, at this stage, to remember that the idea of the origin of the living from the not living is very old, and has persisted for at least twenty centuries. A belief in spontaneous generation was held at dates as widely separated as are suggested by the names of Aristotle, Augustine, Lucretius, Luther, Francis Bacon, and Harvey.

The belief rested on misinterpretations not unnatural at times when microbes were unknown, or when the life-histories of common parasites were very dimly discerned, or when no one dreamed of the minuteness and ready transportability of the germs of even worms. It was supposed that thistles arose de novo from the dust, that bees sprang from dead oxen, that frogs were engendered from the mud.

But though many thoughtful biologists, such as Huxley and Spencer, Nägeli and Haeckel, have accepted the hypothesis that living organisms of a very simple sort were originally evolved from not-living material, they have done so rather in their faith in a continuous natural evolution, than from any apprehension of the possible sequences which might lead up to such a remarkable result. The hypothesis of abiogenesis may be suggested on a priori grounds, but few have ventured to offer any concrete indication of how the process might conceivably come about. To postulate abiogenesis as if it were a matter of course betrays an extraordinarily easy-going scientific mood.

Some Concrete suggestions.—One of the few concrete suggestions is due to the physiologist Pflüger (1875), whose views are clearly summarized in Verworn's " General Physiology." Pflüger suggested that it is the cyanogen radical (CN) which gives the "living" proteid molecule its characteristic properties of self-decomposition and reconstruction. He indicated the similarities between cyanic acid (HCNO) a product of the oxidation of cyanogen and proteid material, which is admitted to be an essential part, at least, of all living matter. "This similarity is so great," he said, "that I might term cyanic acid a half-living molecule." As cyanogen and its compounds arise in an incandescent heat when the necessary nitrogenous compounds are present, they may have been formed when the earth was still an incandescent ball. "If now we consider the immeasurably long time during which the cooling of the earth's surface dragged itself slowly along, cyanogen and the compounds that contain cyanogen and hydrocarbon-substances had time and opportunity to indulge extensively in their great tendency toward transformation and polymerization, and to pass over with the aid of oxygen, and later of water and salts, into that self-destructive proteid, living matter."

Verworn adopts and elaborates this suggestion: Compounds of cyanogen were formed while the earth was still incandescent; with their property of ready decomposition they were forced into correlation with various other compounds likewise due to the great heat; when water was precipitated as liquid upon the earth these compounds entered into chemical relations with the water and its dissolved salts and gases, and thus originated extremely labile, very simple, undifferentiated living substance.

Professor E. Ray Lankester, in his article, "Protozoa," in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," makes the suggestion, "that a vast amount of albuminoids and other such compounds had been brought into existence by those processes which culminated in the development of the first protoplasm, and it seems therefore likely enough that the first protoplasm fed upon these antecedent steps in its own evolution."

Dr. H. Charlton Bastian suggests, in regard to the first origin of living matter upon the earth, that the nitrate of ammonia which is known to be produced in the air during thunder-storms, and is discovered in the thunder-shower, may have played an important part in the mixture of ingredients from which the hypothetical. natural synthesis of living matter was effected.

Mr. J. Butler Burke postulates original vital units or "bio-elements," which "may have existed throughout the universe for an almost indefinite time," which are probably "elements possessing many of the chemical properties of carbon and the radio-active properties of the more unstable elements," and which, by interacting on otherwise present carbon-compounds, probably gave rise to cellular life as we know it to-day.

By allowing quantities of radium salt to act on sterilized bouillon, Mr. J. Butler Burke obtained transient little bodies which he called "radiobes," which seemed to him on the borderline between the animate and the inanimate. Mr. Burke did not claim, however, to have effected "spontaneous generation." To expect to make a full-blown bacillus at the present day, he says, would not be less absurd than to try to manufacture a man. He admitted that his "radiobes," which are soluble in water, are "altogether outside the beaten track of living things," though he maintained that they have n—1 of the n properties of the living organism. "That little more and how much it is, That little less and what worlds away." It should be remembered, too, that this investigator postulates a potential vitality, and indeed spirituality, in all matter. Matter, he says, is ultimately mind-stuff, and the atoms are nothing more than ideas.

Difficulty of the Problem.—It must be admitted that, in spite of these and other concrete suggestions, we are still far from being able to imagine how living matter could arise from not-living matter. But we must remember that many things happen which we do not understand. Two substances combine to form a new substance with quite different properties, which are doubtless due to what the component parts have contributed, though we do not know how. At the same time in postulating possible processes which may have occurred long ago in Nature's laboratory, it is al-ways desirable that we should be able to back these up with evidence of analogous processes now occurring in Nature the usual mode of argument in evolutionist discourse but these analogues are not forthcoming at present. It is usual to refer to the achievements of the synthetic chemist, who can now manufacture artificially such natural organic products as urea, alcohol, grape sugar, indigo, oxalic acid, tartaric acid, salicylic acid, and caffeine. But four facts should be borne in mind: (1) the directive agency of the intelligent chemist is an essential factor in these syntheses; (2) no one supposes that a living organism makes its organic compounds in the way in which many of these can be made in the chemical laboratory; (3) no one has yet come near the artificial synthesis of proteids, which are the most characteristic substances in living matter; and (4) there is a great gap between making organic matter and making an organism. When Kekulé spoke of looking forward to the time when we shall "build up the formative elements of living organisms" in the laboratory, he probably had the distinction between the organism and its several component substances quite clearly in mind.

We are in the habit of comparing what man can do in the way of evolving domesticated animals and cultivated plants with what we believe Nature has done in the distant past. Why, then, should we not argue from what the intelligent chemist can do in the way of evolving carbon-compounds to what Nature may have done before there was any-thing animate ? There is this difference, among others, in the two cases, that in the former we can actually observe the operation of natural selection which in Nature takes the place of the breeder, while we are at a loss to suggest what, in Nature's as yet very hypothetical laboratory of chemical synthesis, could take the place of the directive chemist.

Thus Professor F. R. Japp, following Pasteur, pointed out in a memorable British Association address that natural organic compounds are "optically active" (a characteristic property which cannot be here discussed), that artificially prepared organic compounds are primarily "optically in-active," that by a selective process the intelligent operator can obtain the former from the latter, but . . . it is difficult to conceive of any mechanism in nature which could effect this. "No fortuitous concourse of atoms, even with all eternity for them to clash and combine in, could compass this feat of the formation of the first optically active organic compound." "The chance synthesis of the simplest optically active compound from inorganic materials is absolutely inconceivable."

Not content, however, with indicating the difficulty which the believer in abiogenesis has here to face, Professor Japp went on to say perhaps, in so doing, leaving the rigidly scientific position: "I see no escape from the conclusion that, at the moment when life first arose, a directive force came into play a force of precisely the same character as that which enables the intelligent operator, by the exercise of his will, to select out one crystallized enantiomorph and reject its asymmetric opposite." After prolonged discussion, and in view of various suggestions of possible origins, he wrote: "Although I no longer venture to speak of the inconceivability of any mechanical explanation of the production of single optically active compounds asymmetric al-ways in the same sense, I am as convinced as ever of the enormous improbability of any such production under chance conditions."

Apart, then, from the fact that the synthesis of proteids seems still far off, apart also from the fact that there is a great gap between a drop of proteid and the simplest organism, we have perhaps said enough to show that the hypothesis of abiogenesis is not to be held with an easy mind, attracted as we may be to it by the general evolutionist argument.

Apartness of Living Creatures.—In thinking over this difficult question there are two cautions which should be borne in mind. We must not exaggerate the apartness of the animate from the in-animate, nor must we depreciate it. On the one hand, we must recognize that modern progress in chemistry and physics has given us a much more "vital" conception of what has been libelled as "dead matter"; we must not belittle the powers of growth and regrowth which we observe in crystals, the series of form-changes through which many inorganic things, even drops of water, may pass; the behavior of ferments; the intricate internal activity of even the dust. When we consider, too, such phenomena as "latent life," and "local life," and the relatively great simplicity of many forms and kinds of life, we do not find it easy to discover absolute, universal, and invariable criteria to distinguish between animate and inanimate systems, or between the quick and the dead. To some extent, also, the artificial synthesis of complex organic compounds, and the ingenious construction of "artificial cells" which closely mimic the structure of living cells, though no one supposes that they are in the faintest degree "alive," serve to lessen the gap which seems at first so wide.

There is certainly some interest in the artificial foam-cells of Quincke and Bütschli, in Dubois' "vacuolids" or "eobes," in Butler Burke's "radiobes," in Sir William Ramsay's Helium cells, in Lehmann's liquid crystals, and in the wonderful crystallization phenomena described by von Schrön. One of the latest of the courageous essays bearing on experimental biogenesis (M. Kuckuck's "Lösung des Problems der Urzeugung," 1907), points out that if we add Barium chloride, or a salt of Radium, or a salt of Nuclein, to a gelatines peptone - asparagin - glycerine -sea-water mixture, we may get little corpuscles which feed, grow, segment, move, and, in fact, do most things except live.

It is gratuitous to suppose that experiments along these lines may not help us to get on the track of Nature's synthesis, or that they may not have important practical results. It should be remembered too that while we have no experimental reason for saying that we can make an organism artificially, we have no experimental reason for saying that we cannot. We have no way of proving the impossibility of an occurrence that is not a contradiction in terms.

On the other hand, it is the verdict of common sense and exact science alike that living creatures stand apart from inanimate systems. In the inanimate world we find order, but no self-adjusting adaptation; response to stimulus, but no effective self-preservative response; struggle but no struggle for existence; change but no creative agency.

The living creature feeds and grows; it undergoes ceaseless change, yet has a marvellous power of retaining its integrity; it is not merely a self-stoking, self-repairing engine, but a self-reproducing engine; it has a self-regulative development; it gives effective response to external stimuli; it profits by experience; it uses time; it coördinates its activities into unified behavior, it may be into intelligent deeds and rational conduct. Allowing for the gradual realization of potentialities in the course of evolution, we cannot but feel that if the living emerged from the not-living, then our appreciation of not-living matter must be greatly enhanced. As a matter of fact, however, we cannot at present redescribe any vital behavior in terms of physical and chemical categories, and the secret of the organism has to be admitted as such whether we advance to a vitalistic statement of it or not. In vitalistic doctrine we must distinguish two positions, first, the negative statement, which seems at present safe, that no vital activity can be completely redescribed in terms of physics and chemistry, and second, the positive statement, which is open to various objections, that there is in the living creature some "vital principle" or "Entelechy."

If an Organism Could be Made Artificially, What Then?—Finally, let us suppose that some bold experimenter in the borderland between chemistry and biology, a man like Professor Jacques Loeb, is successful this year or next year in making, not merely a corpuscle of proteid, but a little living thing, by some ingenious synthesis. What then ?

(a) It is quite likely that the steps leading to this hypothetical achievement might be as unlike those which, on the hypothesis of abiogenesis, once occurred in Nature's laboratory, as the artificial synthesis of, say, oxalic acid is unlike what takes place in the sorrel in the wood. (b) At present we cannot assert that the laws of the movements of organic corpuscles can be deduced from the laws of motion of not-living corpuscles continuous as we may believe cosmic evolution to have been and the artificial production of a living creature would not enable us to make this assertion. What simplification of descriptive formule the future has in store for us no one can predict. We may have to simplify the conceptual formule which we use in describing animate behavior, and we may have to modify the conceptual formule which we use in describing inanimate sequences, but at present the two sets of formule remain distinct, and they would so remain even if a little living creature were manufactured to-morrow. (c) If we discovered a method of artificially producing an organism, as Loeb has discovered a method of inducing an egg to develop without fertilization, it would render the hypothesis of abiogenesis more credible. We would then know, what no naturalist at present knows, however strongly he may believe it, that what we call not-living has in it the potentiality of giving origin to what we call living. But the hypothetical discovery would in no way affect the dignity and value of living creatures, or of our own life. The whole world would be more continuous and vital. (d) If it came about that we were able to bring materials and energies together in such a way that living creatures of a simple sort resulted, we should still have to remember that we had acted as directive agents in the synthesis. (e) Finally, if the experiment succeeded, we should not have arrived at any explanation of life. We should be able to say that, given certain antecedent conditions, certain consequences en-sue, but we should still be unable to answer the question how or why. We should have a genetic description of an occurrence, but no explanation of it. For that is what science never supplies.

In conclusion, to quote Principal Lloyd Morgan, "Those who would concentrate the mystery of existence on the pin-point of the genesis of protoplasm, do violence alike to philosophy and to religion. Those who would single out from among the multitudinous differentiations of an evolving universe this alone for special interposition, would seem to do little honor to the Divinity they profess to serve. Theodore Parker gave expression to a broader and more reverent theology when he said: "The universe, broad and deep and high, is a handful of dust which God enchants. He is the mysterious magic which possesses," not protoplasm merely, but "the world."

This is all very well, some one may say, but are you not at least leading us to look with some favor on what is a materialistic view of life ? If this be the impression left, then our statement has failed of its purpose. Materialism is the theory that there is nothing real in the universe except redistributions of matter and energy in the ether. To which it may be answered first, that matter, energy, ether, are simply conceptual formulae of science, corresponding to a reality which we can-not get at, but which we get nearest when we know it in ourselves as thought; and secondly, that no juggling with these concepts can possibly account for even the materialistic philosophy.

"There can be little doubt," Huxley said, "that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phenomena be represented by materialistic formulae and symbols."

"But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place him-self on a level with the mathematician who should mistake the x's and y's with which he works his problems for real entities; and with this further disadvantage as compared with the mathematician that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of life."

As Prof. Karl Pearson puts it in his " Grammar of Science": "The problem of whether life is or is not a mechanism, is not a question of whether the same things, 'matter' and 'force,' are or are not at the back of organic and inorganic phenomena of what is at the back of either class of sense-impressions we know absolutely nothing but of whether the conceptual shorthand of the physicist, this ideal world of ether, atom, and molecule, will or will not also suffice to describe the biologist's perceptions."

Those who may be inclined to dissent from the view that Science deals merely with "counters;" which are representative of reality, may be re-minded that even in the psychical realm we do the same. Thus Berkeley affirms over and over again that no idea can be formed of a soul or spirit.

"The words will, soul, spirit, do not stand for different ideas, or in truth, for any idea at all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which, being an agent, cannot be like unto or represented by any idea whatever." And similarly, to go to the other pole, namely, scientific psychology, we find one of its ablest exponents, Professor Münsterberg, admitting that it "is not an expression of reality, but a complicated transformation of it, worked out for special logical purposes in the service of our life." ("Psychology and Life," 1899.)

Fundamental Mysteriousness of Nature.—Let us put the matter in another way by asking whether Science has any contribution to make toward a recognition of the spirituality of Nature. At first, of course, Science draws in its horns and says NO. That is not its métier. But it is better than its word, for it discloses Rationality, Order, Unity, Progress; and that is great gain. It also recognizes the fundamental mysteriousness of Nature, and that in three ways. There is mysteriousness in the common denominator say, Matter, Energy, Ether to which it seeks to reduce things. There is mysteriousness in the sequences it discloses, when the resultant consequences are new as compared with their component antecedents. There is mysteriousness in the beginnings from which it starts in its genetic descriptions; they do Organisms and Their Origin 131 not suggest what is to come out of them any more than an egg suggests a bird.

Fortuitousness.—The general trend of evolutionary thinking and speculation inclines us to entertain the belief that the living may have emerged from the not-living in ages long since past. If so, we may be sure that it did not emerge by chance, but was as rigorously predetermined as the origin of the solar system from a swarm of meteorites. Lord Kelvin made himself responsible for the statement, that while "fortuitous concourse of atoms" is not an inappropriate description of the formation of a crystal, it is utterly absurd in respect to the coming into existence, or the growth, or the continuation, of the molecular combinations presented in the bodies of living things.' One agrees with the latter part of the statement, but one finds it difficult to entertain the first. What does a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" mean, unless simply a concourse whose antecedent conditions are unknown to us ? It cannot mean a chaotic state of things, if it gives rise to one of the most beautiful of cosmic units a crystal.

In Conclusion. If we see any good reason for believing in the erstwhile origin of the living from the not-living, we give a greater continuity to the course of events, and we must again read something into the common denominator of science Matter, Energy, and the Ether. We have already read into this, Wonder and Mystery, Harmony and Order, and we must now read into it Progress and, from a philosophical standpoint, Purpose. Unless Increase of Complexity and Integration, Harmony and Beauty, be considered. Ends justifying themselves, we cannot read the Riddle of the Earth considered by itself. If, however, the dust of the earth did naturally give rise to living creatures, if they are in a real sense her children, then we understand better all the groaning and travailing, and what seemed only a development becomes an evolution.