But without the chemicals, the cell has no purpose. 但要是没有这些化学物质，细胞就毫无用处。

As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, "If everything needs everything else, how did the community of molecules ever arise in the first place?" 正如戴维斯所说：“要是一切都需要别的一切，分子社会最初是怎么产生的？”

It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake, 这就好像你厨房里的各种原料不知怎的凑到一起，自己把自己烤成了蛋糕，

but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. 而且，必要的话，这块蛋糕还会分裂，产生更多的蛋糕。

It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. 所以，我们把生命称为奇迹，这是不足为怪的。

It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to understand it. 我们才刚刚开始搞个明白，这也是不足为怪的。

So what accounts for all this wondrous complexity? 那么，是什么促成这神奇的复杂结构呢？

Well, one possibility is that perhaps it isn't quite—not quite—so wondrous as at first it seems. 哎呀，一种可能是，也许它并不那么——并不那么——神奇，就像乍一看来的那样。

Take those amazingly improbable proteins. 以那些不可思议的蛋白质分子为例，

The wonder we see in their assembly comes in assuming that they arrived on the scene fully formed. But what if the protein chains didn't assemble all at once? 我们假设，我们所看到的奇迹般的排列，是在形成完毕以后才出现的。

What if, in the great slot machine of creation, some of the wheels could be held, as a gambler might hold a number of promising cherries? 要是在那台大老虎机里，有的转轮可以受到控制，就像玩滚木球游戏的人可以控制几根大有希望的木柱一样，那会怎么样？

What if, in other words, proteins didn't suddenly burst into being, but evolved. 换句话说，要是蛋白质不是一下子形成的，而是慢慢地演化的，那会怎么样？

Imagine if you took all the components that make up a human being—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and so on, 请你想象一下，要是你把制造一个人的所有材料都拿出来——碳呀，氢呀，氧啊，等等，

and put them in a container with some water, gave it a vigorous stir, and out stepped a completed person. 和水一起放进一个容器，然后用力摇一摇，里面就走出一个完整的人。

That would be amazing. 那将会是不可思议的。