450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to involve the " arbitrary infringement " of Nature's uniformity of 

 which Dr. Bastian speaks. If these admittedly competent and pro- 

 verbially fearless men could be led by facts to see that their teaching 

 promulgated an " arbitrary infringement " of Nature's method, is it 

 rational to suppose that they would persist in it another hour ? The' 

 very position, therefore, of the leading biologists of the day in rela- 

 tion to the hypothesis of " spontaneous generation," is an authorita- 

 tive declaration of the invalidity of the data on which it rests. 



To Dr. Bastian, nevertheless, the "facts," such as they are, have 

 carried a different conviction. But, on analysis, that conviction is 

 evidently not wholly formed upon the bare "facts." It is influenced 

 and stimulated by a " philosophy " which, in short, is this : Continuity 

 in Nature is the grand outcome of all modern research ; but if you are 

 to have this in a sense wide enough to include the organic world, 

 .you must have " spontaneous generation." Give up this, and con- 

 tinuous evolution is impossible ; therefore abiogenesis must be a great 

 truth. 



Of course, continuity in Nature is a profound truth. Every careful 

 and comprehensive student of modern biology will admit that. By 

 Dr. Bastian's own showing, Huxley, Darwin, and Spencer, are its most 

 competent expositors. But they prefer not to be hasty. They decline 

 to determine the exact manner or line of that continuity until they 

 have facts of a competent kind to guide them. There may be lines of 

 continuity infinitely more subtile than any the subtilest minds have 

 even conceived. At least they decline to accept one, laid down, as it 

 appears to them, not by Nature, but by Dr. Bastian ; and no believer 

 in the evolution of living things, surely, is recreant of his creed who 

 declines a similar surrender. 



The largest difficulty surrounding the question of the mode of 

 origin of septic organisms is that of discovering their life-cycle. By 

 dealing with them in aggregations we run told and untold risks. 

 The conflict of results by this means, in the most accomplished hands, 

 employing the most refined methods during the past eighteen years, 

 is a sufficient witness. Repetitions of experiments, and conflicting 

 results, and explanations of the reason why; and so the cycle rolls. 

 Of course, important lessons in biology are learned, but not the lesson. 

 And yet by the teachings of this complex and doubtful method alone 

 Dr. Bastian is content to accept " abiogenesis " as a great fact in 

 Nature. 



To those who are best acquainted with the experimental history of 

 the subject for the last twenty but certainly for the last six years 

 this is the more remarkable. For the weight of evidence is certainly 

 not only not in favor of "abiogenesis," but is in the strongest sense 

 adverse to it. The most refined, delicate, and continuous researches 

 all point to the existence of what are at present ultra-miscroscopic 

 germs. This, indeed, is directly affirmed by the authors. A single 



