Sec. 36. Proposition 3. No Spontaneous 

 Generation of Animals; nor of Plants 



Professor Huxley (1825-1905) was a scientist 

 and philosopher of the first magnitude. He was an 

 intimate friend to Darwin ; an evolutionist and ma- 

 terialist of the strictest sect and fully competent to 

 speak for these schools of philosophy. Among other 

 works on evolution, he wrote, " Man's Place in Na- 

 ture' (1863), in which he argued at great length that 

 man is a descendant of an ape. Hence the following 

 quotations from his works may be taken as authorita- 

 tive admissions on the part of the evolutionist and 

 materialist. 



He says : 



"The fact is that at the present moment there is 

 not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that 

 abiogenesis [spontaneous generation] does take place, 

 or has taken place, within the period during which 

 the existence of life on the globe is recorded.' (Hux- 

 ley, Anat. Invert. An., pp. 40-41.) 



Writing in the Encyclopedia Britannica (9 ed., 

 vol. 8, p. 746.) he says, in substance, that the aphor- 

 ism: "omne vivum ex vivo' ("all life comes of life") 

 is a " well established law of the existing course of na- 

 ture. ' ' 



The theory of spontaneous generation assumes 

 that certain inorganic elements, spontaneously and 

 automatically grouped themselves together in such 

 proportions and in such a manner, chemically and me- 



