Asymmetry and Vitalism

Abstract

WHILST Prof. Japp is to some extent justified in saying that all his critics “seem to be moving in that unreal world where, a fount of type, if jumbled together sufficiently often, ends by setting up the text of Hamlet,” still it must be borne in mind that he himself provoked a discussion in such an imaginary region by raising the question as to the possibility of producing, without the interference of a living agency, an optically active substance unaccompanied by its enantiomorph. The possibility of such an occurrence has been pointed out by Profs. Karl Pearson and Fitzgerald, and is of course open to no doubt.