Brilliant mind?
In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker on February 1, 1871,[14] Charles Darwin addressed the question, suggesting that the original spark of life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes". He went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed."[15] In other words, the presence of life itself makes the search for the origin of life dependent on the sterile conditions of the laboratory."