342 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



any case, therefore, even if we do not know anything more 

 about it, there remains to us the supposition, "which can at 

 least not be disputed, that at that time, under conditions 

 quite different from those of to-day, a spontaneous genera- 

 tion, which now is perhaps no longer possible, may have 

 taken place. 



But it is necessary to add here that, by the recent pro- 

 gress of chemistry and physiology, the mysterious and 

 miraculous character which at first seems to belong to this 

 much disputed and yet inevitable process of spontaneous 

 generation, has been to a great extent, or almost entirely, 

 destroyed. Not fifty years ago, all chemists maintained that 

 we were unable to produce artificially in our laboratories 

 any complicated combination of carbon, or so-called "organic 

 combination." The mystic " vital force " alone was sup- 

 posed to be able to produce these combinations. When, 

 therefore, in 1828, Wohler, in Gottingen, for the first time 

 refuted this dogma, and exliibited pure " organic " urea, ob- 

 tained in an artificial manner from a purely inorganic body 

 (cyanate of ammonium), it caused the greatest surprise and 

 astonishment. In more recent times, by the progress of syn- 

 thetic chemistry, we have succeeded in producing in our 

 laboratories a great variety of similar " organic " combin- 

 ations of carbon, by purely artificial means — for example 

 alcohol, acetic acid, formic acid. Indeed, many exceed- 

 ingly complicated combinations of carbon are now arti- 

 ficially produced, so that there is every likelihood, sooner 

 or later, of our producing artificially the most complicated, 

 and at the same time the most important of all, namely, the 

 albuminous combinations, or plasma-bodies. By the con- 

 sideration of this probability, the deep chasm which was 



