Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/266

 established fact that it is impossible for life to arise from a concurrence of inorganic materials and forces. This was the opinion of Ferdinand Cohn, the great botanist; of H. Richter, the Saxon physician, and of W. Preyer, a physiologist well known from his remarkable researches in biological chemistry. According to these scientists, life on the surface of the globe cannot have appeared as a result of the reactions of brute matter and the forces that continue to control it.

According to F. Cohn and PI. Richter, life had no beginning on our planet. It was transported to the earth from another world, from the cosmic medium, under the form of cosmic germs, or cosmozoa, more or less comparable to the living cells with which we are acquainted. They may have made the journey either enclosed in meteorites, or floating in space in the form of cosmic dust. The theory in question has been presented in two forms:—The Hypothesis of Meteoric Cosmozoa, by a French writer, the Count de Salles-Guyon; and that of cosmic panspermia brought forward in 1865 and 1872 by F. Cohn and H. Richter.

Hypothesis of the Cosmozoa.—The hypothesis of the cosmozoa, living particles, protoplasmic germs emanating from other worlds and reaching the earth by means of aerolites, is not so destitute of probability as one might at first suppose. Lord Kelvin and Helmholtz gave it the support of their high authority. Spectrum analysis shows in cometary nebulæ the four or five lines characteristic of hydro-carbons. Cosmic matter, therefore, contains compounds of carbon, substances that are especially typical of organic chemistry. Besides, carbon and a sort of