The complex - not to say unbelievable sophisticated - organization of higher organismic life would be more intelligible if we at least knew its pre-stages. But this is actually the case. According to us, too little use has been made of it. We again and again think of some mental direction [guiding] in all that takes place here [in matters of life] (with the two variants of a permanent influence or a one-off push) without realizing that our mind itself is just a consequent and expression of this influence. Before us we have a not particularly continuous, but well recognizable developmental series of whole organisms and their organs (such as of the wing, the vertebrate eye, the vascular and nervous system), and we have the empirical laws and rules of metamerizing, potentialization, differentiation, specialization, etc., expressed in relatively valid albeit not entirely explained formulations. Many large gaps we can close fictitiously or speculatively. And regarding the greatest enigma, namely the origin of Life, we have serious ideas, and of the atomic constituents and their potencies we also know quite a bit.
If one wants to inform oneself what -- viewed purely chemically, not considering biochemically physiological results -- living substance can actually do [perform], then it will be little-revealing to investigate the corresponding abilities of protein molecules. At most one may say that their maximum capability is s i m i l a r to living substance. Until now, physics and chemistry have, deliberately and methodically (why?) abstained from holistic life-phenomena.