PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 2/5 



No less careful a writer than Huxley, himself an ardent 

 admirer and diligent student of Harvey, tells us (" Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica," article Evolution, p. 746) that " Harvey believed as 

 implicitly as Aristotle did in the equivocal generation of the 

 lower animals. Harvey shared the belief of Aristotle, whose writ- 

 ings he often quotes, and of whom he speaks as his precursor 

 and model, with the generous respect with which one genuine 

 worker should regard another that such germs may arise by a 

 process of ' equivocal generation ' out of non-living matter " ; but 

 I am by no means confident that this assertion does justice to 

 Harvey, or that the quotations from Aristotle prove anything 

 except that Harvey was not fully prepared to demonstrate their 

 error. While Huxley ("Spontaneous Generation," 1870) tells us 

 he can find no justification for the notion that Harvey doubted 

 the occurrence of spontaneous generation, I find ample evidence 

 that he had made many experiments which led him to distrust 

 the opinion which prevailed in his day; although he may not 

 have felt fully armed to attack the teachings of " my leader, Aris- 

 totle, . . . one of nature's most diligent inquirers, . . . whose author- 

 ity has such weight with me that I never think of differing from him 

 inconsiderately." 



It is true that he quotes without comment, and often without 

 credit, the very words in which Aristotle affirms spontaneous gen- 

 eration ; but, as an offset to this, he tells us explicitly (Exercise the 

 forty-first) that he shall show in another place "that many animals, 

 especially insects, arise and are propagated from elements and 

 seeds so small as to be invisible (like atoms flying in the air), 

 scattered and dispersed here and there by the winds ; and yet 

 these animals are supposed to have arisen spontaneously, or from 

 decomposition, because their ova are nowhere to be found." 



He was far too courteous and too cautious to have ventured 

 to criticise "The Philosopher," to even this extent without scien- 

 tific evidence, and in Exercise the sixty-ninth he tells us why his 

 researches were never published. 



"Let gentle minds forgive me," he asks, "if, recalling the 

 irreparable injuries I have suffered, I here give vent to a sigh. 

 This is the cause of my sorrow : whilst in attendance on his 

 majesty, the king, during our late trouble and more than civil 



