s theory is that it only shifts the problem of
the origin of organisms (i.e. living creatures) from the earth to
elsewhere.

The third answer is that living creatures of a very simple sort may have
emerged on the earth's surface from not-living material, e.g. from some
semi-fluid carbon compounds activated by ferments. The tenability of
this view is suggested by the achievements of the synthetic chemists,
who are able artificially to build up substances such as oxalic acid,
indigo, salicylic acid, caffeine, and grape-sugar. We do not know,
indeed, what in Nature's laboratory would take the place of the clever
synthetic chemist, but there seems to be a tendency to complexity.
Corpuscles form atoms, atoms form molecules, small molecules large
ones.

Various concrete suggestions have been made in regard to the possible
origin of living matter, which will be dealt with in a later chapter. So
far as we know of what goes on to-day, there is no evidence of
spontaneous generation; organisms seem always to arise from pre-existing
organisms of the same kind; where any suggestion of the contrary has
been fancied, there have been flaws in the experimenting. But it is one
thing to accept the verdict "omne vivum e vivo" as a fact to which
experiment has not yet discovered an exception and another thing to
maintain that this must always have been true or must always remain
true.

If the synthetic chemists should go on surpassing themselves, if
substances like white of egg should be made artificially, and if we
should get more light on possible steps by which simple living creatures
may have arisen from not-living materials, this would not greatly affect
our general outlook on life, though it would increase our appreciation
of what is often libelled as "inert" matter. If the dust of the earth
did naturally give rise very long ago to living creatures, if they are
in a real sense born of her and of the sunshine, then the whole world
becomes more continuous and more vital, and all the inorganic groaning
and travailing becomes more intelligible.

Sec. 4

The First Organisms upon the Earth

We cannot have more than a speculative picture of the first living
creatures upon the earth or, rather, in the waters that covered the
earth. A basis for speculation is to be found, however, in the simplest
creatures living to-day, such as some of the bacteria and one-celled
animalcules, especially those called Protists, which have not taken an