It is established that simple chemicals, under influences such as electrical discharges, can combine to form such organically important structures as amino acids. Evolutionists have often proposed some such reaction as the beginning of life. However, the amino acids are neither life nor are they sufficient for life. It would be necessary to have them polymerized into polyamino acids. Several schemes for such polymerization have been proposed; but it is shown that there are strong reasons to doubt that any of them ever happened. One suggestion, in particular, has been that hydrogen cyanide, formed under primitive conditions, polymerized to form complicated molecules which were at least on the way to forming part of living things. However, a closer investigation shows that there is no evidence that the result of the polymerization-if such it be-is the production of molecules of the kinds necessary for life.