The first view, that the germs of life may have come to this
planet on a meteoric visitor from some other world, as a
storm-driven bird may take its parasites to some distant island,
is not without adherents to-day. It was put forward long ago by
Lord Kelvin and others; it has been revived by the distinguished
Swede, Professor Svante Arrhenius. The scientific objection to it
is that the more intense (ultra-violet) rays of the sun would
frill such germs as they pass through space. But a broader
objection, and one that may dispense us from dwelling on it, is
that we gain nothing by throwing our problems upon another
planet. We have no ground for supposing that the earth is less
capable of evolving life than other planets.
The second view is that, when the earth had passed through its
white-hot stage, great masses of very complex chemicals, produced
by the great heat, were found on its surface. There is one
complex chemical substance in particular, called cyanogen, which
is either an important constituent of living matter, or closely
akin to it. Now we need intense heat to produce this substance in
the laboratory. May we not suppose that masses of it were
produced during the incandescence of the earth, and that, when
the waters descended, they passed through a series of changes
which culminated in living plasm? Such is the "cyanogen
hypothesis" of the origin of life, advocated by able
physiologists such as Pfluger, Verworn, and others.
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