Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/742

722 to have occurred at "a time when the heat of the earth's surface was falling through those ranges of temperature at which the higher organic compounds are unstable," than at the present day. Why such conditions would be more favorable than those now existing Mr. Spencer does not say; and that such an alteration should suffice to put a stop to Archebiosis, although we see living matter still growing freely all over the earth under the most diverse conditions as regards temperature, seems very difficult to believe. Yet no other suggestion is offered in explanation of an assumption which seems essentially unscientific. For the assumption that Archebiosis took place only in the remote past puts this process on a quasi miraculous level, and tends to assimilate it to an act of special creation, the very notion of which Mr. Spencer, in other cases, resolutely rejects.

Again, what reason does Prof. Huxley give, in explanation of his supposition as to the present non-occurrence of Archebiosis? He says if it were given to him "to look beyond the abyss of geologically-recorded time," to a still more remote period of the earth's history, he would expect "to be a witness to the evolution of living protoplasm from non-living matter." And the only reason distinctly implied why a similar process should not occur at the present day is, because the physical and chemical conditions of the earth's surface were different in the past from what they are now. And yet, concerning the exact nature of these differences, and the degree in which the different sets of conditions would respectively favor the occurrence or arrest of an evolution of living matter, Prof. Huxley cannot possess even the vaguest knowledge. He chooses to assume that the unknown conditions existing in the past were more favorable to Archebiosis than those now in operation. This, however, is a mere assumption which may be entirely opposed to the facts. It is useless, of course, to argue upon such a subject, but still it might fairly be said, in opposition to his assumption of the impotency of present telluric conditions, that the abundance of dead organic matter now existing in a state of solution would seem to afford a much more easy starting-point for life-evolution than could have existed in that remote past, when no living matter had previously been formed, and consequently when no dead organic matter, thence derived, could have been diffused over the earth's surface.

Prof. Huxley is, however, very inconsistent, since, in spite of his declared expectation of witnessing the evolution of living from lifeless matter, if it were given him "to look beyond the abyss of geologically-recorded time," he had said, scarcely five minutes before, in reference to experimental evidence bearing upon the present occurrence of a