THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 107 



not a distinct one from that of budding. This again would add 

 still more to the probabilities of the occurrence of spontaneous 

 generation, because it reduces the egg from a distinct, as it were 

 an individualistic feature, to one which is merely a passing 

 characteristic in the life of an animal. It then loses caste, its 

 potentiality is gone, it passes out of a high controlling state, 

 which conditionates and precedes all subsequent phases, to a 

 subordinate state, which it then must hold in common with, and 

 simply as one of the first of several sequences, which are all of 

 equal value, at least inasmuch as one of them cannot be omitted 

 without destroying the continuity of the successive phases char- 

 acteristic of the life of a living being. In this subordinate state, 

 then, it cannot be claimed for the egg that its peculiar, idiosyn- 

 cratic condition should be the one any more than any other, for 

 instance such as budding, which originally began the animal 

 phase of being on earth ; for although the budding phase implies 

 necessarily an individual to bud from, yet it is hardly more 

 clearly related to some previous individual existence than is the 

 egg. The physiological and normal relation of the egg is to be 

 evolved from a reproductive organ, an ovary, and an ovary im- 

 plies an animal to possess it. This could all happen according 

 to the theory of spontaneous generation, for in that case the 

 adult animal is formed to preexist the egg. Origin by budding, 

 and by eggs, ovogenesis as it is called, being therefore put out 

 of the question, the last mode left is that by spontaneous gen- 

 eration, which essentially amounts to a repetition of the great 

 original, primary act of the direct creation of animals in an 

 adult state.* 



Thus the matter stands in my mind. If I may not appear to 

 be right in the eyes of some, pray tell me who has been inspired 

 with the revelation of the truth, for to him alone would I listen 

 with deference ; otherwise the question is open alike to the 

 reason of every mind, without any preponderance in favor of the 



* I use the term " adult state" not as strictly meaning full grown, but rather 

 as indicating any of those free conditions of an animal, above the fixed, confined 

 state of the egg-phase. 



