SP OJYTAiVEO US-GENERA TION CONTR VERS Y. 4 49 



conclude that Nature's otherwise universal method is changed, in the 

 outmost fringe of organized being. Mere reasoning could never ac- 

 complish this. It must he hard, defiant fact, which none can gainsay. 

 But verily no such facts nor even their most distant forecasts are 

 "before us. The profound difficulties which bristle round the inquiry 

 on every haud are prominent signals for caution ; while the uncer- 

 tainty and incompetency of the methods hitherto employed, and their 

 conflict of results, is alive with meaning. Indeed, we are dealing 

 with organisms so minute as to elude all but our best optical appli- 

 ances ; and the accurate and correct interpretation of the details they 

 enable us to discover requires the practice and experience of years. 

 Of the developmental history of these organisms themselves, we 

 know from actual observation almost nothing with certainty ; and the 

 little we do know from such careful and patient observers as Cohn, 

 Billroth, Ray, Lankester, and others, is so complex and conflicting 

 as to demonstrate the necessity of ^vears of patient experiment and 

 skilled research, and to plainly tell us of our ignorance of this mi- 

 nute and wonderful group of organic forms. And yet, forsooth, we are 

 asked, upon the conflicting testimony of a multiplicity of boiled infu- 

 sions, yielding often even in the same hands uncertain results, and in 

 different hands conflicting ones, to believe that organic Nature whose 

 method of reproduction is the same to the very limits of certain 

 knowledge changes its method in this uncertain and cloudy region. 



Of course, to " spontaneous generation " as a mode of vital repro- 

 duction there can be no a priori objection. Let us have it by all 

 means, if it be a fact in Nature ; but not on any other terms. Is it 

 reasonable to suppose that such men as Darwin, and Huxley, and 

 Tyndall, and Burdon-Sanderson, and Cohn, and Billroth, and Lankes- 

 ter, would shrink from " spontaneous generation " because of the 

 :i consequences " to which, strangely enough, it is by some supposed 

 to lead ? The very thought admits of nothing but ridicule. And 

 yet Dr. Bastian is displeased with Darwin 1 because he has not defi- 

 nitely determined whether all living things originated in one primor- 

 dial germ, or originated spontaneously in multitudinous centres scat- 

 tered over the earth's surface. Both Huxley and Tyndall are in effect 

 charged with grave inconsistency, 5 because, while they admit the ori- 

 gin of all vital forms by evolution, they yet declare that they have 

 never seen an instance of " spontaneous generation " of organized 

 forms. It is asked, " Why should men of such acknowledged emi- 

 nence in matters of philosophy and science as Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 and Prof. Huxley promulgate a notion which seems to involve an 

 arbitrary infringement of the uniformity of Nature?" I dare not 

 answer for them ; but for myself I answer, Because the facts as pre- 

 sented to them on the subject as well known to them as to Dr. Bas- 

 tian, and we may venture to say as well considered do not appear 



1 "Evolution and the Origin of Life," pp. 13-17. * Ibid., pp. 15, 16. 



vol. ix. 29 



