THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4580, 8 September 1883, Page 1

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Men of science may amuse themselves by speaking of life being brought to the earth by the arrival of a meteor, in reality a fragment of some once peopled world , which has been destroyed by conflict with another or by internal disturbances. But this is more a scientific jest than a grave reality. Astronomy knows nothing of worlds coming into conflict. On the contrary, the laws of motion assure us that if anything is so unlikely that it may be regarded as absolutely impossible, it is the encounter of two orbs in mid space ; nor have we any reason to suppose that a' planet can be rent into fragments by internal convulsions. If we had, we have not the slightest reason for supposing that orbs thus unfortunate would be more likely to be inhabited than their more lucky fellows worlds. If these were inhabited already, we gain nothing by bringing to them the fragments of other worlds which nave exploded -„ and if they were not inhabited, while the burst or shattered worlds were, we are called on to imagine (Tor no one can believe) . the absurdity that only inhabited worlds are liable to destruction, for the benefit of those which are without inhabitants. To which absurdity this additional one issupperadded, that the seeds of life would survive the destruction of their planet home, and the journeying through millions on millions of years (rather millions of millions) which science assure us they would have to make through the cold of interstellar space before they would fall on any other world. And all these absurdities to no purppse >so far as the origin of life is concerned, for they take us back but a step, which brings us in reality no nearer to all life.—Professor Proctor, in Bel* gravia.