“So that, as Professor Japp said, as long ago as 1898 , ‘The phenomena of stereo-chemistry support the doctrine of vitalism as revived by the younger physiologists, and point to the existence of a directive force, which enters upon the scene with Life itself and which, in no way violating the laws of the kinetics of atoms’—that ought to comfort you, Hoskyns—‘determines the course of their operation within the living organism. That is that at the moment when Life first arose, a directive force came into play—a force of precisely the same character as that which enables the intelligent operator, by the exercise of his will, to select one crystallised enantiomorph and reject its asymmetric opposite.’ I learnt that passage by heart once, as a safeguard against cocksureness and a gesture of proper humility in face of my subject.”
“In other words,” said Matthews, “you believe in miracles, and something appearing out of nowhere. I am sorry to find you on the side of the angels.”
“It depends what you mean by miracles. I think there is an intelligence behind it all. Else, why anything at all?”
“You have Jeans on your side anyway,” put in Hoskyns. “He says, ‘Everything points with overwhelming force to a definite event, or series of events, of creation at some time or times, not infinitely remote. The universe cannot have originated by chance out of its present ingredients.’ I can’t tell you what produced the first molecules of gas, and you can’t tell me what produced the first asymmetric molecules of Life. The parson here may think he knows.”
“I don’t know,” said Perry, “but I give it a name. I call it God. You don’t know what the aether is, but you give it a name, and deduce its attributes from its behaviour. Why shouldn’t I do likewise? You people are making it all very much easier for me.”
It was no good. I had to ask my question. I burst in, violently, inappropriately, on this theological discussion: