THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 214, 6 September 1912, Page 5

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION BT CHEMICAL INTER-ACTION. SEARCH FOR MISSING LINK BETWEEN LIVE AND DEAD MATTER. (By Cable.—Press Association. —Copyright.) LONDON, September 5 At a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at ■Dundee, Professor Schaefer, of Edinburgh (president of the association) delivered an address dealing with the origin of life. The professor said that, setting aside as devoid of scientific foundation the theory of supernatural intervention in the first production of life, we were compelled to believe that it owed its origin to evolution. Life, he said, was purely a matter of chemical inter-action. Chemists, sooner or later, would be able to produce a living substance similar to that from which all existing vital organisms were evolved. Recent research, he went on to say, suggested the probability of a dividing line between living ithd non-living matter less sharp than that which had been hitherto supposed to exist. The professor suggested the need for a careful search for the missing link between living and dead matter. The question was hopeless of solution if true life were only evolved once, but he' suggested that it was happening still. On the subject of death, he said that he did not agree with Professor Metehnikoff as to the possibilities of prolonging life. He (the speaker) held that old age and death was the natural and necessary sequence of life. Even if disease were altogether eliminated, certain fixed cells in the body must grow old and become functionless. Professor Halliburton said that the address was an historic one which might arouse a controversy similar to that caused by Tyndall's and Huxley's celebrated addresses. Mr Caird, of Dundee, jute manufacturer, has presented the association with £10,000. The "Times," in commenting on Professor Pehaefer's address, remarks that in declaring that- the problems of life were essentially problems of matter the Professor guarded himself against crude and obsolete materialism by carefully distinguishing between life and the soul.