The St. Louis Republic. [volume], August 13, 1905, SUNDAY MAGAZINE, Image 43

About The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919

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WHAT IS LIFE
WHENCE CAME IT
By John Butler Burtte
Professor at Cavendish
Laboratory Cam
bridge, England
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An Explanation of His
Itecent Experiments
With Radium
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TUB experiments in which I have been engaged
have aroused so much public interest, and
have caused so many suggestions. criticisms
guarded and unguarded, whether friendly or other
wise, that I am now, however reluctantly. co:n
IH'lIcd to sjwak. Primarily. I want to Ktint out
the great danger there i of a preliminary scientific
note in a scientific journal taing misunderstood to
some extent, as I fear it li.fi lccn. and perhaps
also misconstrued by the cnthub.ia.stic mind of the
public.
The question as to whether the microscopic forms
which I have obtained with sterilized tauillon
the ordinary culture medium and radium are or
are not living things dejiends altogether ujon what
our conception of life is. and ujm how broad or
how narrow is the definition we are willing to accept
of the phenoma of vital processes. When these
atoms which I have obtained are examined through
a microscojie a distinct indication of growth and
segregation is seen. They reach a certain size and"
then divide. That would indicate clearly that
they are not crystals. They are ossihy a primitive
form of life. Everything, or nearly so. is radio
active the earth is. and in some suitable medium life
may have originated on the earth in such a manner.
The professed biologist, as it seems (I ilo not
profess to lc ont!. since physics is the subject to
which I have been particularly devoted) should have
the right to sjieak and to decide for us the question
as to what is to lie understood by living ami not
living matter; what is this unit or atom of life:
whether it is a man. an acorn, a micros oj.ic cell
or the atom of radium, or something el.se that we
know nothing of. In the realm of chemistry till
eight years ago the chemist ruled supreme. To
him the atom w;is the sacred structure. It was
anathema to all who would divide it. Hut the
physicist viewed it from a different standKint. In
stead of looking down on it as the smallest of things,
he liHkcd up to it as great compared with the
smallest that he knew, and promised for it many
xis.sibilities. In this .struggle he has lccn victorious,
and the conquered territory, so to sjicak. the
borderland tat ween the two sciences, has led us to
form closer ties of friendship and a clearer under
standing tat ween chemists and physicists alike.
Why should it not ta s with the biologist?
May it not ta tli.it a mutual understanding ct
can ta arrived at with them, and that we yet may
lecome allies in the same field: that the different cs
that apparently exist should ta found to be due
merely to some misapprehension or irrelevancy?
Pasteur was a physicist and chemist, but he followed
his studies where they led him with an ojen mind.
Tnd.i!l was ala a physicist. In my own small
way, I too jierhajis may ta permitted to pursue my
experiments with freedom, wheresoever they may
lead There are question in biology of the dee;est
interest to the physicist. What I have obtained
seemed in the first instance to have lcen cither mi-croK-s
or crystals, or neither of these, but some
thing in the tarder-Iine talwccn them and to mv
mind they aptiear no.v to approximate more closely
to bacteria than to trvstals as ordinarily tmder
stiHHl. though strictlv sjHviking they apjear to differ
largely from both, but I make this statement with all
luc reserve. Until more twmcrful instruments,
for which I am waiting at present, are at hand I
should prefer to withhold further opinion; on this
subject.
The third possibility is at present the most prob
able: that they are in the critical state of matter
tatweon the mineral and the vegetable kingdoms.
ossessing not all the qualities of either, but many
of the properties of tatli: that unsteady or un
stable state from which, for anything I know, or
any of us can know, one process though probably
not the only one by which the evolution of living
matter from not living matter as we know these,
may hav taken or ta taking place: that critical
state, in a word, in which matter, through some
hitherto unknown sourte of energy, may have
sprung into life, or fallen into al solute inertness.
For this I cannot offer at present, nor does it seem
to me necessary to ofcr, any stronger arguments
than those I have adduced already. And if it was
pressed upon me at present to say whether these
forms I have obtained are living or not living mat
ter. I should ta" forced reluctant! to reply that they
apjircd to me, from what I have dcscrilied, to ta
in that anomalous condition like, for example,
matter in the critical state tatween a liquid and a
gas. That should satisfy cither of the devout ad
herent of these oposite views. 1 should ta obliged
to admit that for aught that I knew at present, they
scented to convey to my mind and those of many
others the tardcr-line tatween the living and the
dead. Hut more than this I cannot say, and even
this, it must ta tame in mind, is only a iitrson.il
opinion, in which I tlo not feel confident th.it a
worthier critic might not yet disclose a flaw.
The "radium" may ta. and I am at prt-sent not
loth to think is. that state of matter that separates,
or ticrhaps unites, the organic and the inorganic
worlds. Hut I prefer to give my own personal
opinion merclv as a hint that in the radio-activity
of matter ami the product produced by it in their
growth, disintegration and decay mav ta sought
Fditnr' Nnie: loha Butler Barkc ia a onnc man. in the
prime nf life. He i an Irithmaa. and ent to Triaitr
Collctc. Dufclia. hrn tutcca. Alter Ukiac hH decree, fce
wred therewith Pn'ttnr Fitrgcrald in scientific research.
Laarr he seat to Miua't Coilete. Blrtaiathatn. a a lecrarer.
and ut-eauentiv earned a fcllonhin. in Oven't f!fill-
Minchc:cr. He aeat treat Camhridre. and after vorkiac
with lrofrMr Thoauoa lor aoautimc look a decree is
mcarca three jrcartafo.
that vital principle and source of vital energy which
in the beginning withstood that high temperature
at which most assuredly our planet must have
once existed. Doubtless there was a time when
it existed as an incandescent mass at a tcmjierature
which life as we know it could not iossibly have
withstood. As it cooled at some time or
another life apiicarcd. That is our eiectation.
Xfiw, if in sterilizing, as in the old exjerinients
of thirty years ago, a test-tuta containing living
matter the vital processes are destroyed, and do not
apjicar again, how then, in the larger c.xiicrimcnt
in the history of the earth, can the conditions
of vital processes have originated? for the mere
fact that it was at a higher temperature than tliat
which could supjtort life was enough also, it would
apjicar. to have eliminated all traces of what we
call vitality. Still, as wc say, our cxjicctation is
that in that larger e.x(ierimcnt which forms an
obliterated jiage in 'he history of our planet, the
most important phase in its development, life
doubtless in a simple form did arise. The condi
tions then must liave ta-en different from those
existing in an ordinary sterilized tcst-tuta. as in the
c.xjierimcnts of Pasteur. Tyndall and others. These
e.xjieriments have really no taaring on the question
at issue as to whether radio-activity can atford the
energy for life.
The process of radio-activity, however, is not
destroyed by heat, at least not at teinju-mtures far
higher than any at which life can lie maintained.
This is the one new proerty of inorganic matter
which has been discovered since the days of Iluxlev.
and which endows it with Mime of the proierties of
organic nature: of growth, of instability and of
decay; and as we see now in the "radiota-s" of
growth, of sul di vision and jiossibly of repro
duction too.
The problem of the origin of life, which the
biologist for the time taing has almost, if not alto
gether, abandoned, if not in des-air. at least in
quiet resignation, would thus apjiear to present
more hojK.ful signs of yielding a solution in the
hands of the physicist than in his own. I say this
with all ilue deferent e. New ideas and new met hotls
of tackling the question are coming within our
reach, while physical sciente is steadily stretching
the tardcr-line of its territory jicrhajrs even into
the greater world of living things.
Hchind all these divisions anil sub-divisions of
the sciences there are to ta found many assumptions,
hyjiotheses wlikh for the time ta-ing may ta- and
probably are extremely useful, although at the
same time they should ta regarded as provisional,
ami ought on no at count to ta- allowed to stand in
the way of free siicculation and inquiry on the one
hand, nor give support to gross assurance on the
other. It will ta observed that our own views are
not unlike those of the late Ilerlicrt Spencer, who
talievcd that the continuity tatween animate anil
inanimate matter v.. is a thing which in the course
of time --though to him it was not evident when -would
ta established on an exjierimental basis.
And the late Professor Huxley, too. has eloquently
expressed his own deep conviction on this all
absorbing question, though to him it was an act of
philosophic faith, a matter of exjicctation rather
than of belief. He has well said these memorable
word, which more than onte have lccn quoted
and req noted, that
With nnramc chemistry, molecular phy-ics and phy
siology yet in their infancy and every "lay tnakin pro-