LIFE'S ORIGIN.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1556, 27 September 1912, Page 5

LIFE'S ORIGIN.

« "LIVING THING FROM LIVING THING," . A' SYDNEY • PROFESSOR'S VIEWS. Professor W. A. Iln swell, of tho chaii of biology at Sydney University, is nuionp thoso scientists- who do not agree with Professor Schaefor's cabled opinions as tc the origin of life. So far as our experience extends, Professor Haswoll says, living thing originates only from liviiif thing. Wo know nothing about physical and chemical agencies through which the inost essential processes of life arc carried on, and they are totally unliko anythinc operating in tho sphere of non-living matter. "As far as observation reaches," Professor Haswcll states, "even tho simplest and most minute organisms aro formed always only from other organisms of the same kind by a process of reproduction. It is only comparatively recently that this doctrine —tho doctrine of biogenesis, first emphatically enunciated by Harvey—ha: become an established and practically uni-versally-accepted one. Tho Greek philosophers, or certain schools of them, believed in tho development of new forms even oi animals of comparatively high organisation, such as frogs and reptiles, from nonliving matter, and similar views were held through the Middle Ages. But the more the details of animal and plant life and development have bren studied, the mora restricted has become the range' of alleged occurrence of abiogenesis, or the development of the living from the. not-living. Finally, during thejast 50 years oven such jowly organisms as'the bacteria—the minutest .and iwrhaps structurally the simplest of living .been shown always'to arise biogeneticallv, and never to be produced oneiv. Thus at length Harvey's dictum "Omne vivum ex rive," has come to be .accepted as an axiom by gist"The subject of biogenesis is obviously closely bound up with the question of the essential nature of life, arid, Professor Schaefer appears to have expressed views on both of these subjects. -. Physiologists are somewhat apt to become^converted to a chemical alid mechanical-view of the nature of life. So much of their work, has to dri with.tlie. determination and measurement of chemical and physical changes in organisms associated' chemical and physical changes in. the.environment that they are liable to overlook other aspects of the vitality-problem which .will not.so readily, admit of. a purely chemical, and physical explanation. Ofore particularly are they liable to overlook the many phenomena in connection with embryology —the development of. the individual organism—which are not readily explainable from a purely chemical aid physical standpoint. "Let me illustrate the difficulty of such pxplanation by an example. We- have, let us suppose, two sets of eggs of fishes—A ,wd B—ill process of hatching ■in two separate tanks. These have been - taken from -two somewhat widely different kinds Df fishes with-the-characteristics of which we are.well acquainted. But it may be luite impossible by any' process of examination which we may make. to. discriininite between the two sets of eggs—in their ?xtremely simple microscopic structure they are indistinguishable from one an ; )ther: there is no recognisable difference between them. As the embryos in the egPS levelop, there is for a long tube complete igreement—apparent, identity—in the varijus stages. But ultimately nil-the eggs raken from fish A become, when mature, Bshes of-the .A-species, and all -the eggs taken, from fish B become fishes of the B -species. Since no -structural difference is recognisable-between the eggs of A and those of B, we are told that the difference in-the eggs which lead-to the differences between the. two-kinds of adult fishesradical and constant differences in the •cales, in tho fins, in the skeleton, and tfher parts—must be a chenlic-al difference. The results ultimately arrived at in tho ievelopment of the eggs are due, according :o tho nnti-vitalists, to 'the operation of :he same physical and chemical forces that we see at work in the world of the non-living.' But the oft-repeated formula loses its semblance of profundity when ivc ask further, 'Where do we sec such processes, capable, of leading, to such' results, going on outside the living organism?' If such results are due to purely :hemical and physical processes, let us at least qualify the statement, by the admission that the most essential of the pro:csses characterising living organisms are ;arried on through physical and chemical lgencies, of which nothing is known to us, md which are totally unlike anything operating in the sphere of non-living matter."