And we know the constituent elements of
this protoplasm, and their proportions, and the temperatures within
which protoplasm as such can exist. But we are quite powerless to make
it, or to show how it is made, or to detect nature in the act of making
it. All the evidence we have points to one conclusion only, that life is
the result of antecedent life, and is producible on no other conditions.
Repeatedly have scientific observers believed that they have come on
instances of spontaneous generation, but further examination has
invariably shown that they have been mistaken. We can put the necessary
elements together, but we cannot supply the necessary bond by which
they are to be made to live. Nay, we cannot even recall that bond when
it has once been dissolved. We can take living protoplasm and we can
kill it. It will be protoplasm still, so far as our best chemistry can
discover, but it will be dead protoplasm, and we cannot make it live
again; and as far as we know nature can no more make it live than we
can. It can be used as food for living creatures, animals or plants, and
so its substance can be taken up by living protoplasm and made to share
in the life which thus consumes it; but life of its own it cannot
obtain.
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