It is no doubt true, here again, that such judgments cannot be called final, and that not all scientific men will accept them as they stand. But all alike are forced to agree that our previous notions are completely upset, and that we are compelled to recognize the fact that of these fundamental questions we know far less than the little we seemed to know. What, then, is to be thought of Professor Haeckel's confident utterances, which could be justified only on the supposition that we know everything? And what becomes of the famous Law of Substance, if both its parts are found thus to contradict the conclusion he would draw from it?
The case is thus summed up by the writer of the article just cited:
The discovery of radio-activity is one of the most momentous in the history of science. "There has been a vivid new start" (we again borrow Sir William Crookes' expression). "Our physicists have remodelled their views as to the constitution of matter." The remodelling indeed has hardly commenced.... What is undeniable is that the Daltonian atom has, within a[{44}] century of its acceptance as a fundamental reality, suffered disruption. Its proper place in nature is not that formerly assigned to it, ... its reputation for inviolability and indestructibility is gone for ever. Each of these supposed "ultimates" is now known to be the scene of indescribable activities, a complex piece of mechanism composed of thousands of parts, a star-cluster in miniature, subject to all kinds of dynamical vicissitudes, to perturbation, acceleration, internal friction, total or partial disruption. And to each is appointed a fixed term of existence. Sooner or later, the balance of equilibrium is tilted, disturbance eventuates in overthrow; the tiny exquisite system finally breaks up. Of atoms, as of men, it may be said with truth, "Quisque suos patitur manes."
"Here," in fact, "we meet the impenetrable secret of creative agency."[62][{45}]
IX
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE
THE question concerning the origin and nature of Life is of supreme and vital importance not only for those who speak of Evolution as a force or principle by which everything is guided and governed, but also for such as understand by the term no more than a process which they say has actually occurred. Evolutionists of this second class disclaim, with Huxley, any "philosophy of Evolution." They are content to take the world as a going concern, at the farthest point in the past to which, even speculatively, Science can trace it, as that vast primordial nebula of which we have heard.[63] Given this,—assuming the existence of such a nebula, constituted as they suppose,—they believe that the whole subsequent history of the world is fully explained by the uniform action of the same laws of matter which we find in operation to-day. Not only is the establishment of our Solar System, of sun and planets, to be thus[{46}] accounted for, but likewise the production of life, of the organic world of plants and animals.
Hence it necessarily follows that life must originally have been evolved naturally from lifeless matter, for all are agreed that not only in the nebula, but on the earth when it first started its independent career, life did not, and could not, exist.
There has been [says Virchow][64] a beginning of life, since geology points to epochs in the formation of the earth when life was impossible, and when no vestige of it is to be found.
If the evolution hypothesis is true, [says Huxley][65] living matter must have arisen from not-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.