United States or Zimbabwe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the question is, Does this continuity terminate now in the living series, and is there then a break a sharp, clear discontinuity, and beyond, another realm immeasurably less endowed, known as the realm of not-life? or Does what has been taken for the clear-cut boundary of the vital area, when more deeply searched, reveal the presence of a force at present unknown, which changes not-living into the living, and thus makes all nature an unbroken sequence and a continuous whole?
Judged of hastily, and apart from the facts, it may appear to some minds that an origin of life from not-life, by sheer physical law, would be a great philosophical gain, an indefinitely strong support of the doctrine of evolution. If this were so, and, indeed, so far as it is believed to be so, it would speak and does speak volumes in favor of the spirit of science pervading our age.
They possess the essential properties of life, but in their most initial state. And their numberless billions, springing every moment into existence wherever putrescence appeared, led to the question, How do they originate? Do they spring up de novo from the highest point on the area of not-life, which they touch?
Word Of The Day