The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1912. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 72, 18 November 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1912. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

&ir Oliver Lodge has seen fit "to comment on Professor Schafer’s address to the British Association on the origin of life in the last issue of the “Contemporary Review.” Without hesitation Sir Oliver Lodge admits that Professor Schafer, as a great specialist in 'biological research is rrjore likely to lie right in anticipating that life will essentially he producible in the chemist’s laboratory than other people are likely to be right in denying it, but he goes further and argues that even so the nature of life will not thereby be known. All that the scientist will lie able to achieve will be to place certain life-producing materials in juxtaposition, just as the savage produces fire by rubbing pieces of stick together without knowing in the least what fire is. “If life results,” writes Sir Oliver Lodge, “it will be because of the properties of those materials, and of the laws of interaction of life and matter just as truly as when a seed is put into the

ground or an egg into an incubator. It will be a step beyond that, truly, but it would be a step not of a wholly dissimilar kind. The nature of life would not be more known than before, any more than the nature of magnetism is known to a child who succeeds in evoking it into a piece of steel.” This well-known thinker and writer goes on to express the view that if the prediction is verified it will enable science to examine the properties of living matter under very favourable conditions. He also remarks on the fact that Professor Schafer avoids any reference to the soul, and concludes his comment by advising theologians not-to base their belief in the direct action of the Deity in mundane affairs upon a presumed inability of man to place life-producing materials in such juxtaposition that life results. If they do it is possible that their position will be undermined, and “another discovery may have to be scouted with alarmed and violent anathemas.” Many people were waiting for Sir Oliver Lodge to speak on this matter and his remarks will be widely read and discussed.