814 ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



428. Nomocjcny l or Thawnatogeny ? 2 - -The French Academy 

 of Sciences was the field of discussion and debate, from 1861 to 

 1864, between the ' Evolutionists ' holding the doctrine of pri- 

 mary life by miracle, and the ( Epigenesists ' who try to show 

 that the phenomena are due to the operation of existing law. 

 The analogy of the discussion between Pasteur and Pouchet, and 

 that between Cuvier and Geoffrey, is curiously close. Besides 

 the superiority in fact and argument, Pasteur, like Cuvier, had 

 the advantage of subserving the prepossessions of the ( party of 

 order ' and the needs of theology. The justice of Jamin's sum- 

 mary, 3 awarding to the chemist the palm of superior care and 

 skill both in devising and performing the experiments, and ex- 

 posing the inferiority of the physiologist in polemical ability and 

 coolness of argumentation, cannot be denied. Nevertheless, 

 Pouchet, is rapidly acquiring, in reference to the origin of monads, 

 that position which Geoifroy Saint-Hilaire has taken in regard 

 to the origin of species. It is a suggestive and instructive fact 

 in the philosophy of mind and the history of progress. 



Some rare instances, in every generation, are gifted with the 

 faculty of discerning the light of truth through all obstruction : 

 when its glimmer is of the feeblest their brain responsively 

 vibrates through a barrier of beliefs, prepossessions, precise logic, 

 across thickets of facts deemed to be rightly understood, athwart 

 accepted ( laws ' and principles, organised corps of the soldiers of 

 science, public opinion, &c. ; and these men never know when 

 they are beaten and put out of court : happily, against all hin- 

 drance, they persist ( 'e pur si muove? 



Pasteur by an ingeniously devised apparatus, 4 collected atoms 

 in the atmosphere, and described and figured them as examples of 

 6 organised corpuscles,' f globules,' or the ( germs ' of living things, 

 there floating. 5 In a solution of organic matter, otherwise unfit 



~ o ' 



for the development of life, the addition of some of these germs 

 was followed by the appearance, in abundance, of its simple forms. 

 To the conclusion that the monads were the consequence, not 

 merely the sequence, of the f ensemencement,' it can be objected 

 that the atmospheric atoms figured 6 are not like the observed 

 formified corpuscles by which bacteriums have been seen to be 



1 v6(jLos, law, 7eVo>, root of yiyvonai, to ' become,' or come into being. 



" 0aG,ua, miracle, ysvw. 



3 cccxxxiv". pp. 442, 443. * cccix". p. 25, PL I. fig. 1. 5 Ib. PI. I. figs. 2-9. 



6 Ib. "quelques corpuscles organisees." p. 28, PI. I. figs. 2, 3, 4: "tout-a-fait 

 semblables a des germes d'organismes inferieures." p. 37. Of the various well- 

 marked forms of ova or germs of lower organisms, I know not any recognisable in the 

 figures above cited. 



