THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 95, 7 September 1912, Page 5

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

PROFESSOR SCIIAEFER'S CONCLUSIONS. CRITICISED BY SCIENTISTS. By Cable —Press Association—Copyright. Received 6, 10.30 p.m. Melbourne. September (5. Professor Osborne, of Melbourne University, commenting on Professor Schaefer's statements on the origin of life, said that in regard to the first statement, he thought the majority of scientists were in accord with Professor Schaefer, but upon some of the others biologists would be much divided. There would be violent opposition from that point of view, as well as from that of the theologian. The statements, he said, may be taken as a reaction from the conclusions of men like Bergson, who entered the physiological field without adequate equipment or training, and had been laying clown the law of the superiority of spirit to matter. OUR SIMIAN RELATIONS. HOW .THEY FELL FROM GRACE. Received 6, 10.30 p.m. London, September 0. Professor Elliott Smith, in a paper read before the anthropological section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, on the evolution of man, said that as regards the orangoutang, chimpanzee and gorilla, they were not as ancestral forms of man but as unenterprising members of man's family. They were simply men whose ancestors chose physical strength rather than intelligence as a means of livelihood. Dealing with the origin of life, Professor Schaefer said, setting aside as devoid of scientific foundation supernatural intervention in the first production of life, we were compelled to believe it owed its origin to evolution. Life was purely a matter of chemical interaction, and chemists sooner or later would be able to produce a living substance similar to that from which all existing vital organisms had been evolved. Recent research suggested the probability that the dividing-line between living and non-liv-ing matter was less sharp than had hitherto He suggested the need of cSrelul search for the missing link between living and dead matter. The solution was hopeless, if it were true that life had only been evolved once, but he suggested it was happening still. On the subject of death he disagreed with Metclmikoff, and held that old age and death were a natural and necessary sequence. Even if disease were altogether eliminated, CSrtain fixed cells 6f the body must grow old, and become functionlese.