The Dominion SATURDAY, MAT 31, 1913. AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1764, 31 May 1913, Page 4

The Dominion SATURDAY, MAT 31, 1913.

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

Professor Schaefer's British Association address on the origin of life was the subject of an instructive discussion by the Wellington Philosophical Society on Wednesday evening. Owing to the limited time available for the debate it was quite impossible to do anything like full justice to the questipn, and, as it is understood that a number of those who desired to express their opinions;did not have an opportunity of doing so, it may be worth while for the society to consider the advisableness of devoting another evening to the subject. .Tho statement by Dr. Cockayne that "it is probably a waste of time to worry about the problem of life" indicates an unusual mental attitude for a scientific man. If Newton, Darwin, Kelvin, Wallace and the other illustrious scientists of the past and the present had confined their attention to things which accorded with the standard of utility set up by smaller minds, modern science would not have been able to point to those fruitful theories and great discoveries which have so wonderfully broadened and enriched the' mental.outlook of mankind. This determination not to consider any problem as finally insoluble has been one of the most potent factors ill the development of the mind of man —and there is no more fascinating problem than that relating to the origin of life. Whence we come and whither we are | going are questions which will always receive attention from tho keenest intellects, and the efforts to penetrate the mystery have resulted in many important additions to human knowledge. Professor Schaefer has certainly not solved the problem of life, but his _ masterly statement of tho facts which go to support his belief in the gradual and unbroken evolution of the living from the non-living is no more a waste of timo than was Darwin's long and patient investigations regarding the origin of species. One may disagree with many of the details of Professor Schaefer's argument, and at the same time agree with him in the opinion that there is no gap between the inorganic and the organic. This seems to be tho position taken up by Professor Kirk in the Philosophical Society's discussion. Belief in spontaneous generation is, however, a great act of faith, which can at present only be justified as a reasonable prevision of the scientific imagination. If we are to be guided strictly by actual scientific verification tho principle that all life comes from pre-existing life still holds the field; but scientists will never bo content to regard this position as final. They cannot rest until every gap has been bridged. Though all the details of tho process cannot yet be described, the scientific mind refuses to believe that there aro any breaks in evolution, which has been defined as "a continuous, orderly, and broadly progressive change from the simple to the more complex." Dr. Benjamin Moore, Johnston Professor of Bio-Chemistry in .tho University of Liverpool, expresses a widcly-'held belief when lie states that "the beginning of life was not a fortuitous event occurring millions of years ago, and never to be repeated, but one which in its primordial stages keeps on repeating itself all the time and in our generation. So that if all intelligent creatures were by some holocaust destroyed, up out of the depths in process of millions of years intelligent beings would once more emerge." This, of course, is only a splendid theory. It has not been proved, but it is a reasonable inferenoo from a very wide range of known facts. The ncovitalist school, to ' which reference was made in the Philosophical So-, ciety's discussion, do not contend that life has not arisen out of nonliving matter, but they do hold that its development cannot be fully explained by chemical and physical laws. It is foolish to attempt to dismiss Bergson with a sneer as a mere outsider, for such eminent scientists as Bunge, J. A. Thomson, Driescii, .Wolff, Haldane, and M'Dougall arc also convinced that mechanical explanations are unable to cover the whole ground. Even if all Professor Schaefer's facts arc accepted, they only amount to a very partial description of the process by which life has probably been evolved —and description is not explanation. Professor Sciiaefer did ,not even define life, and he frankly admitted that we have no knowledge as to the mode of its origin.

_ It is quite legitimate for the scientist to limit his inquiry to those aspects of life which are capable of mcchanical description, but it should be clcfirly understood that a complete explanation must cover a much wider ground. A distinguished American philosopher has pointed out that when we attempt to explain any effect by mcchanical causes we are compelled to carry into the causes all the facts that are to be explained. When life is traced back to so-called dead matter, then matter itself requires to be explained, and no one even pretends to know what it really is. As Professor. ''oiiden Bowne says "the atomic mechanism is scarcely regarded now us anything more than _ a convenient mode of representation, which in no way gives the fact as it is, and lliore and more all physical things are viewed as phenomena of some nil-embracing energy of which they are only manifestations, bo that the true causality of the world lies not in thorn, but in

a power manifesting itself_ through | ?liem. . . . Mcehanism is not the real working ,agent, but only tho form under which tho hidden power works in space." These words of a well-known philosopher arc fully supported by tho conclusion of an eminent scientist (Dr. Moore), who admits that we possess no knowledge of the fundamental properties of matter, and here it is open to us either to declaro that we must leave the problem so, or to call in something in the nature of an infinite intelligence to account for the facts. "The iirst position never lias satlsI'd, and as evolution advances never will satisfy the mind; the second position at all ages in the world's history of which we possess any record has led to the evolution of systems of religion." The modern scientists and philosophers who contend that the mechanical theory of tlv; universe lias hopelessly broken down, firmly believe in the complete continuity of evolution, but they hold that the whole process is "instinct with divinity" (to quote the words of Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh), and nowhere is this more obvious than in the great fact of direction in general and in detail whicn compels the recognition' of a directing factor in opposition to all ultra-mechanical conceptions of evolution.