However, while spontaneous generation is "absolutely inconceivable" (Darwin), and while no experiments made on dead matter have ever produced living (plant and animal) matter, life must have originated at some time from non-life according to the evolutionary hypothesis. The theory assumes that at some time the globe was in an incandescent stage. At that time there could not have been any life on our earth. But as the earth cooled, it is held that by some chemico-electric action (electric force acting upon elements in favorable combinations), inert, lifeless matter became endowed with the property which we call life, and this original living substance is called protoplasm. From it, by successive modifications, slow in their operation, the teeming variety of living things is believed to have developed. Now it is a notable fact, that many evolutionists (among them Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory which goes under Darwin's name) frankly admit the inability to account for the origin of protoplasm. From mineral substances, protoplasm differs in that it possesses the power of growth, development, and reproduction. The very first vegetable cell "must have possessed altogether new powers," says Mr. Wallace, "that of extracting carbon from the air and that of indefinite reproduction. Here,"--note this admission,--"we have indications of _a new power_ at work." In other words, forces resident in matter no longer suffice. The evolutionistic principle breaks down. Some fifty years ago it was thought that experimental proof had been found for the presence on earth of the original, simple, unorganized protoplasm; that the basis of all life on earth had been discovered,--in the depths of the ocean. The story of this "discovery" is entertainingly told by the Duke of Argyle in the _"Nineteenth Century"_ magazine. We quote from his article.