germ of life might have been wafted to our world on a
meteorite; but to say that is obviously only to banish the problem to a
greater distance.[1]

Huxley had, in 1868, invented the name "Bathybius" to describe the
deep-sea slime which he held to be the progenitor of life on the
planet. But later on he frankly confessed that his suggestion was
fruitless, acknowledging that the present state of our knowledge
furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living.

And so the problem remains. Sir Edward Schaefer, indeed, has laid it
down that "we are compelled to believe that living matter must have
owed its origin to causes similar in character to those which have been
instrumental in producing all other forms of matter in the universe; in
other words, to {79} a process of gradual evolution,"[2] but he can
throw no further light on the process and its stages.

Sir Oliver Lodge is but speaking the admitted truth when he says that
"Science, in chagrin, has to confess that hitherto in this direction it
has failed. It has not yet witnessed the origin of the smallest trace
of life from dead matter."[3]

No doubt there are many who are hopeful that it may yet be possible to
discover a way by which a cell, discharging all the essential functions
of life, can be constructed out of inorganic material; or, at least,
that it may be possible to frame an intelligible hypothesis as to how
this might have been done under conditions which long ago may have been
more favourable than our own. But, on the other hand, there are not a
few who have quite deliberately abandoned any expectation of the kind.
This was made plain by some of the expressions of adverse opinion which
were elicited by Sir Edward Schaefer's address. Of these the following
may be given as specimens: "The more they saw of the lower forms of
life, the more remote seemed to become the possibility of conceiving
how life arose."[4]

{80}

"He could not imagine anything happening in the laboratory, according
to our present knowledge, which would bring us any nearer to life."[5]

"Living protoplasm has never been chemically produced. The assertion
that life is due to chemical and mechanical processes alone is quite
unjustified. Neither the probability of such an origin, nor even its
possibility, has been supported by anything which can be termed
scientific fact or logical reasoning."[6]

"The phenomena of life are of a character wholly different from t