“ I now perceive that selection should not be included with the other factors because it is no sense coordinate. The causes of the origin and evolution of life must lie entirely within the physico-chemical and biochemical cycle. ”

“ Through these activities within matter in the living state the dying earth, itself a mere cinder from the sun, develops new chemical com- pounds; the chemical elements of the ocean are enriched from new sources of supply, as additional amounts of chemical compounds, pro- duced by organisms from the soil or by elements in the earth that were not previously dissolved, are liberated by life processes and ultimately carried out to sea; the very composition of the rocks is changed; a new life crust begins to cover the earth and to spread over the bottom of the sea. ”

“ In this lecture I shall attempt to show that since in their simple forms living processes are known to be physico-chemical and are more or less clearly interpretable in terms of action, reaction and interaction, we are compelled to believe that complex forms will also prove to be interpretable in the same terms. ”

“ According to the interpretation by Pupin of this third law of Newton, action and reaction refer to what is going on be- tween material parts in actual contact, whereas interaction refers to what is going on between two material parts which are connected with each other by other parts. Action and reaction are simultaneous, whereas interaction refers to an action and reaction which are not simul- taneous. For example, when one pulls at a line the horse feels it a little later than the moment at which the line is pulled ”

“ If we affirm that the entire trend of our observation is in the direc- tion of the physico-chemical rather than of the vitalistic hypotheses this is very far from affirming that the explanation of life is purely materialistic or that any present physico-chemical explanation is either final or satisfying to our reason. Chemists and biological chemists have very much more to discover. ”

“ Is the development of life evolutionary in the same sense or is it essentially different from that of the inorganic world? Let us critically examine this question by comparing the evolution of life with what is known of the evolution of matter^ of the evolution of the stars^ of the formation of the earth ”

“ From the very beginning the predominant philosophical tendency has been against the idea that all the forms we see around us have come into existence solely through an accumulation of accidental individual variations, by the mere blind concurrence of these variations and their actual survival, without the operation of any inner law. Natural science, too, has more and more demon- strated its inadequacy. ”

“ Thus, in answer to our second question, it certainly appears that living matter does not follow the old evolutionary order but represents a new assemblage of energies and new types of action, reaction, and interaction — ^to use the terms of Newton — ^between those chemical ele- ments which are as old as the cosmos itself, unless they prove to repre- sent, as Clarke, Lockyer, and Butherford have suggested, an evolution from still simpler elements. ”

“ To our senses it seems as if the latter view were the correct one, as if something new had been breathed into the aging dust, as if the first appearance of life on this planet marked an actual reversal of the previ- ous order of things. Certainly the cosmic processes cease to run down and begin to build up, abandoning old forms and constructing new ones. ”

“ Chance has been the opinion held by a great line of philosophers from Democritus and Empedocles to Darwin, and including Poulton, de Vries, Bateson, and many others of our own day : chance is the very eesence of the Darwinian selection hypothesis of evolution. William James' and many other eminent philosophers have adopted the ^' chance ^^ view as if it had been actually demonstrated, instead of being, as it is, one of the string of hypotheses upon which Darwin hung his theory of the origin of adaptations and of species. ”

“ The more traditional opinion is that something new entered this and possibly other planets with the appearance of life; this is also involved in all the older and newer hypotheses which group around the idea of vitalism or the existence of specific, distinctive and adaptive energies in living matter. The more modern scientific opinion is that life arose from a recombination of forces preexisting in the cosmos. ”

“ May there not be in the assemblage of cosmic chemical elements necessary to life, which we shall distinguish as the "life elements/^ some Jcnown element which thus far has not be- trayed itself in chemical analysis? ”

“ In physics, when diBtingrulshing between law and chance, we speak of co- ordinated phenomena like planetary motions, and of nan-coordinated phenomena like the motion of individual molecnles in a large number of molecules. In re- gard to such motion, chance or probability or so-called statistical modes of procedure guide the reasoning. Again, radiation is a statistical or non-coordi- nated mode of procedure, and sin^ it is closely related to the growth of plants (the simplest forms of life) why is not life in its constituent elements a statis- tical or chance procedure? ”