itish
Association in 1912, argued that all the main characteristics of living
matter, such as assimilation and disassimilation, growth and
reproduction, spontaneous and amoeboid movement, osmotic pressure,
karyokinesis, etc., were equally apparent in the non-living; therefore
he concluded that life is only one of the many chemical reactions, and
that it is not improbable that it will yet be produced by chemical
synthesis in the laboratory. The logic of the position taken by
Professor Schaefer and of the school to which he belongs, demands this
artificial production of life--an achievement that seems no nearer than
it did a half-century ago. When it has been attained, the problem will
be simplified, but the mystery of life will by no means have been
cleared up. One follows these later biochemists in working out their
problem of the genesis of life with keen interest, but always with a
feeling that there is more in their conclusions than is justified by
their premises. For my own part, I am convinced that whatever is, is
natural, but to obtain life I feel the need of something of a different
order from the force that evokes the spark from the flint and the steel,
or brings about the reaction of chemical compounds. If asked to explain
what this something is that is characteristic of living matter, I should
say intelligence.

The new school of biologists start with matter that possesses
extraordinary properties--with matter that seems inspired with the
desire for life, and behaving in a way that it never will behave in the
laboratory. They begin with the earth's surface warm and moist, the
atmosphere saturated with watery vapor and carbon dioxide and many other
complex unstable compounds; then they summon all the material elements
of life--carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, with a little sodium,
chlorine, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, and others--and make these run
together to form a jelly-like body called a colloid; then they endow
this jelly mass with the power of growth, and of subdivision when it
gets too large; they make it able to absorb various unstable compounds
from the air, giving it internal stores of energy, "the setting free of
which would cause automatic movements in the lump of jelly." Thus they
lay the foundations of life. This carbonaceous material with properties
of movement and subdivision due to mechanical and physical forces is the
immediate ancestor of the first imaginary living being, the _protobion