Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-13

that vital principle and of vital energy which
in the beginning withstood that high temperature
at which most assuredly planet must have
once existed. Doubtless there time when
it existed as an incandescent at temperature
which life know it could not possibly have
Withstood. As it cooled at time
another life appeared. That is expectation.
Now, if in sterilizing, in the old experiments
of thirty years ago, test-tube containing living
matter the vital processes are DESTROYED and do not
appear again, how then, in the larger experiment
in the history of the EARTH the conditions
of vital processes have originated? for the mere
fact that it at higher temperature than that
which could support life enough also it would
appear, to have eliminated all traces of what we
call vitality. Still, as we say our expectation IS
that in that larger experiment which forms an
obliterated page in the history of our planet, the
most important phase in its development, life
doubtless in a simple form did arise. The condi-
tons then must have been different from those
existing in ordinary sterlized test-tube in the
experiments of Pasteur Tyndall and others, These
experiments have really no bearing the question
at issue to whether radio-actvity afford the
energy for life.
The process of radio-activity, however, is not
destroyed by heat, at least not Temperatures far
higher than any at which life can be maintained.
This is the one property of inorganic matter
which has been discovered since the days of Huxley
and which endows it with of the properties of
organic nature: of growth, of instability and of
decay; and as we see now in the 'radiobes" of
growth, of subdivision and possibly of repro
ductiOn too.
The problem of the origin of life, which the
biologist for the time being has almost if not alto
gether, abandoned, if not in despair at least in
quiet resignation, would thus appear to present
more hopeful signs of yielding a solution in the
hands of the physicist than in his | say this
with all due Difference New ideas and new methods
of tackling the question coming within
reach, while physical science is steadily stretching
the border-line of its territory perhaps into
the greater world of living things.
Behind all these divisions and sub divisions of
the sciences there to be found many assumptions
hypothesis which for the time being may be and
probably extremely useful, although at the
same time they should be regarded provisional,
and ought on no account to be allowed to stand in
the way of free speculation and inquiry the
hand, nor give support to gross assurance on the
other 1t will be observed that our own views are
not unlike those of the late Herbert Spencer who
believed that the continuity between animate and
inanimate matter thing which in the
of time-though to him it not evident when
would be established on experimental basis.
And the late Professor Huxley, too, has eloquently
expressed his own deep conviction this all
absorbing question: though to him it was an act of
philosophic faith, a matter of expectation rather
than of belief. He has we'll said these memorable
words, which more than have been quoted
and requoted, that
With organic chemistry, molecular physics and ply
siology yet in their infancy and every day making