THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 10 April 1914, Page 2

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Professor C. Sims Woodhead at a meeting- of the Victoria Institute had some interesting- things to say about the origin of life. He agrees with Professor Schafer in the view that it w-a.4 tquite possible that some very low form of life might-"oe created by the chemist. Hut he insisted that while that might, and probably would come about there was no reason for it to change our belief in Cod. Professor Woodhead holds that Ithe development of any living form that we can recognise under the micros-rope must have involved time almost illimitable, as we reckon it, and our puny and ephemeral experiments would necessarily fail. He is of opinion ( lhat Lord Kelvin really believed i n the possibility of the transference of living matter from cither planets through the agency of meteorites. Whether life was generated . on this globe, or whether it a nose in some other planet affects, however, the main question at issue but little. If we were able to prove that life came to us from same other' star we -should still harve to consider from what source the other star obtained it. Some -day a great philosopher will arise among us whose outlook wo-uld be wide,, and who could found his philosophy on a broad scientific basis. Until then we are scarcely likely to make any great advance in our knowledge of the origin of life. The biologist will continue to study protoplasm, to place unfertilised egg-s in artificial sea water, and he will find evidence of departure from the ordinary processes of development in that these unfertile eggs -may become fertile even under these conditions. lie will bisect embryos and will find that each half will develop into a complete organism. The chemist will go on building- up substances indistinguishable from proteins and pepteids, substances that hitherto have only been turned out from nature's crucible. The physicist will bombarb us with electrons and ions, and the astronomer and the geologist will! each contribute his mite to the treasury of kno.vledgv-. Let us accept any- isolated fact that is fully demonstrated, and, where possible, let us fit into the great

scheme of nature, by the magnitudi

of which we are overwhelmed, and, therefore, but little astonished at the comparatively small part of it that has hitherto been filled in, but of which even the most agnostic. must admit the wonderful order and law that rule throughout.

"So marvellous and complete is it," concluded Professor Woodhead, "that wheni I am informed Unit there

is no personal Cod, 1 answer to myself that of this great scheme I have but one experience, and that is, that all the will, ruling power, the intellect, the . soul and spirit of which T have cognisance, are personal ; and that if I am to argue from the less to the greater, I must accept it that there is a great power above all, ruling, guiding, and regulating, personal, but allpervading, to whom, in however small a degree, we are allowed to liken ourselves, rebel ling against whose laws we aro hound to sufi'er, directly or indirectly, but obeying with the freedom of sons we become more like that from which

we come."