CHAPTER 1 



THEORIES OF THE SPONTANEOUS 

 GENERATION OF LIFE 



Ancient and mediaeval beliefs. 



For many centuries people considered that the Earth was 

 flat and immovable and that the Sun circled round it, rising 

 in the east and hiding itself behind the sea or the mountains 

 in the west. This false belief rested on direct uncritical 

 observation of surrounding natiue. Observations of this kind 

 often suggested that living things, for example insects, 

 worms, and sometimes even fish, birds and mice could not 

 only be born from things like themselves but could also arise 

 fully formed by spontaneous generation, out of mud, dung, 

 earth or other inanimate substances. 



We may find a belief in the possibility of the spontaneous 

 generation of living things amongst all peoples and at all times; 

 beginning in remote antiquity and finishing in our own days. 

 Even now, in the period of the blossoming of exact science in 

 the culturally advanced nations, it is common for their ordin- 

 ary inhabitants to be convinced that maggots arise from dung 

 and rotting meat and that various domestic pests arise of 

 their own accord out of rubbish, mud and dirt. These super- 

 ficial observations miss the fact that dung and filth are to be 

 found in those places where pests lay their eggs from which 

 the new generation of living things develops. 



Tremendous significance ^vas attached to these everyday, 

 uncritical observations of creation characteristic of ancient 

 peoples, at a time when nature was still not studied in detail, 

 nor submitted to analysis and dissection but was accepted 

 in its entirety as the immediate perception of the intuition. 

 In his book Urzeugung und Lebenskraft, E. O. v. Lippmann^ 

 gives a wide range of material to show how extensively such 

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