32 THEORIES OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 



generation, was illusory and was based on false interpreta- 

 tions of observations and incorrect conduct of experiments. 

 At the end of the last century and the beginning of the 

 present one the two warring philosophical camps redeployed 

 their forces in the light of this discovery. 



Vitalism, the idealistic tendency in biology, had already 

 achieved its most exuberant development by the middle of 

 the eighteenth century. At that time our knowledge of life 

 was so limited that it seemed quite impossible to explain 

 physiological and formative processes without recourse to the 

 activity of some special, mysterious ' life force '. However, 

 at the end of the eighteenth century there was a tremendous 

 surge of great discoveries in physics and chemistry, and from 

 that time onwards vitalism suffered one defeat after another. 

 Even by the second quarter of the nineteenth century it had 

 really almost played itself out. The evolutionary theory of 

 Darwin dealt a final crushing blow to vitalism. It showed 

 the way to a scientific, materialistic solution of the problem 

 of the adaptation of form to purpose in the organic world. 

 After this the concept of a ' life force ' became quite un- 

 necessary, it explained nothing and was a purely mystical 

 and meaningless word. 



However, the end of last century witnessed a resurgence 

 of vitalism, which now chose the problem of the origin of 

 life as one of its main rallying points. In 1894 I. Borodin" 

 wrote " Has not the progress of science in the course of cen- 

 turies furnished the vitalists to some extent with weapons? 

 Yes, they certainly have such weapons, they hold a trump 

 card in their hand." Borodin meant by this ' trump ' the 

 unsuccessful attempts to discover the phenomenon of spon- 

 taneous generation. These failures, in his opinion, indicated 

 the presence of an impenetrable barrier between the animate 

 and the inanimate, the complete autonomy of vital pheno- 

 mena. 



Borodin continued: 



That old woman, the life force, whom we buried with such 

 triumph, at whom we mocked in every way, was only pretending 

 to be dead and now decides to demand some rights to life, 

 prepares herself to start up in a new form. . . . Our expiring nine- 



