“It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo stillmore complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.”

—  Charles Darwin

volume III, chapter I: &quot;The Spread of Evolution&quot;, page 18 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=30&amp;itemID=F1452.3&amp;viewtype=image; letter to Joseph Hooker (1871) <br class="br">The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

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Charles Darwin161
British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by… 1809–1882

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