LIFE—WHAT IS IT?

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2574, 23 September 1915, Page 2

LIFE—WHAT IS IT?

SOME THINGS WE DO NOT KNOW. LECTURE BY PROFESSOR KIRK. All down the ages men have asked: What is life? Where does it come from ? How did it begin P What does it mean? Such questions havo never been asked more insistently than at the present day, but the problem still remains unsolved. The vitalists and anti-vitalists each support their views by an appeal to great names and significant facts. The anti-vitalists tell us that lifo is only a matter of physics and chemistry, wliilo the vitalists contend that the mechanical examination fails to account l'or all the facts." There is,, they hold, a "something over".; something else present in living bodies in addition to what is found in nonliving things—some controlling principle. This fascinating problem was discussed from tho vitalist point of view by Professor Kirk in o most instructive lecture entitled "The Basis of. Vitalism," given under the auspices of tho Victoria University Collego Students' Christian Union on Saturday The huge audience, present listened with tho keenest interest to the address.

: Professor Kirk said that his efforts would not be uuweJcome if lie succeeded in .showing that there is still much scientific reason to doubt the answer,. often given, and becoming increasingly popular, that lifo is the outcome of physical and chemical action. This would not be bolstering up mysticism, for he was assorting that science has not yet found the solution of a certain problem, and that the door-at present unlocked by her is' one that experience and reason show that she cannot' unlock with- t'he keys she has already tried. The earlier Darwinian evolutionists regarded life as a datum in tho Descent theory. Yet it is always thought a time may come when the actual origin of this lifo itself may be investigated and described. The 1 rofessor showed how extremely complex is tho physical basis of'life.' Not only is the protoplasm chemically complex, but tho molecule is a of complex architecture. If life is only a series of chemical actions, of energy interchanges, what keeps the series under control so that regularity and certainty become basal principles-of life? Several essential differences botween living and non-living matter were given and illustrated. Some of the wonders of heredity were dwelt upon; the germs of life retaining, sometimes dormant for several generations, all their potentialities. Can any , materialistic theory account for these?

; The history of some of the iater attempts _ to answer the problem of life was briefly given, special reference being made to Needhain (171-5) and to Bastian (1874), bot.li of whom put, forward the hypothesis of sp.>n:,jneous generation. This theory, however, was ably refuted by Huxley, T.vndall, Pasteur, and others. Then came the later experiments of Bastian in colloids, i.e., substances like glue—which do not crystallise, and' which do not pas? through an organic membrano. He records wonderful results, but 11-c.y are seldom taken seriously. Thfere are usually eight or nine elements in protoplasm, yet Bastian, using only sodium silicate and iron pernitrate in' water, obtained the elements carbon, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, and calcium, which wore not there criminally. •No explanation sufficient to satisfy a scientist can account for this, nor can anyone explain what the living organisms fed on. Therefore it is generally admitted that' Bastian's : experiments were not absolutely correot, \e., lie was not afole. to exclude life fiom his inorganic substances.

Professor. Kirk next dealt ... with Schaefer's assertion that sy;nio;io protoplasm will live. It is a curious faot that no protoplasm once 'dead over IS es again in ite original stite.' There aie many difficulties, too, in the belief :uA matter is constancy passim* from the inorganic to the urgau'c stage— (jom non-living to ''ving matter. The intermediate produots, if complex, are always unstable -n tie presence of mi'.'io-' organisms—they will nj/er renea the living stage. It is like Sisyphus ever rolling his stone up. the hill, but never, reaching the top. In concluding, Professor Kirk stated: We d*> not yet know how non-living matter came to live. That event certainly happened at sinne time in the •history of iliis or some other planet. But there is uo reaion to suppose flat it happened move than oiho; and there is every reason to believe that it is not continually happening. The attempts to synthesis© protoplasm have Lntbtrto failed. In any case, tvo work mi a non-living model, and that uiv<:s little ground to hope that uhe thing «;e malic will live.Spontaneous jrenention has never been demonstrated, unless we admit the work of B"stiaui.nci a<apt the miracle of a stream rising higher than, its source. When matter lives, its behaviour, notably in assimilation and in reproduction, is quite different from that of nou-living matter. That behaviour exhibits a complexity in its many changes that/is beyond our conceptions of unordered of chemical changes. An enormous' advance has been made, and must accrue from the close study of this problem. Even the origin of life might be demonstratedj and his position as a Vitalist completely overthrown. In the meantime lie had no choice but to maintain that position, riot because it had over it some vestige of a halo of orthodoxy,' but because it seemed to him to rest on fact. He believed it to be sound iio.t because he'liked to do _so, but because belief was the one thing in which there was no exercise of free will—for a man must believo the thing that seems to him to be true.