building up has taken
place in past ages of the history of our earth was formulated more
than forty years ago by Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley, Haeckel, and others,
and has not been seriously attacked in the interval, but, on the
contrary, generally accepted as a legitimate inference from the facts
ascertained and the theory of the evolution or gradual development of
what we call the material universe.

Professor Schaefer expressed the opinion, anticipated and shared by
many other investigators, that the progress of chemical experiment
renders it probable that further steps, culminating in the successful
construction of "living" matter in the laboratory, are not beset by
any insurmountable obstacles and will sooner or later be accomplished.
There was no "bomb-shell" in this statement, and no excitement as its
result among scientific workers nor amongst those who do not neglect
to study the writings of the "interpreters" desired by Lord Justice
Moulton. There are still some such interpreters carrying on the work
of Huxley and of Tyndall, those great interpreters whose writings
should be studied and treasured as classics.

The most interesting result of the attempt to treat the discussions
at Dundee as a newspaper "sensation," comparable to the reports
relating to motor-car bandits or the pronouncements of political
factions, has been its complete failure. Serious thinkers of all
schools seem to have adjusted themselves to the more modern way of
regarding natural processes even when these relate to matters of such
age-long interest to mankind as the inception of "living" organisms
and of conscious humanity itself. There are fewer now than there were
forty years ago who insist on the older barbaric "explanations" of
these marvels. Few indeed venture to assert the existence of
"spirits"--ghostly essences of various grades and capacities which
enter the bodies of living things and escape from them like so much
gas when they die.[10] The vegetable soul, the animal soul and the
human soul are no longer imagined and described to us as definite
"things" supposed to "explain" the complex processes which go on
respectively in plants, animals and men.

Seventy years ago the facts which were known as to that changing state
of material substances which we describe by the words "hot" and
"cold," were held to be "explained" by the existence of a ghostly
thing called "caloric," which was believed to enter various bodies and
make them hot