Note 219

So one should not always ask the question anymore of why it is precisely proteins that constitute life, such as if proteins were so self-evidently and commonly existing as are sea-salt or clay. Only because life now exists, also its equivalents derived from it are now existing. Apart from this view, there must have been an earth-historical period in which proteins, or at least precursors of amino acids, have originated, and  with them,  but not  from them,  also the origin of life may have taken place. For the last [i.e. the most derived] starting components are already equal, and if the one could be formed, then also the conditions of formation of the other were maximally favorable. [So it might well be the case that in that early period from pre-stages of amino acids or of proteins were generated (chemically) true amino acids or true proteins as well as living molecules.]

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