THE WORK OF PASTEUR 35 



cases repeated boiling acts as follows: the first heating 

 destroys all the vegetati\e forms of the bacteria but the spores 

 remain. After cooling, bacteria develop from the spores but 

 succumb to the second boiling without having succeeded in 

 forming new spores. 



The outstanding Russian scientist K. A. Timiryazev, with 

 his usual clarity of scientific exposition, submitted these 

 attempts to demonstrate the possibility of spontaneous genera- 

 tion to devastating criticism. In an address which he delivered 

 at a session of the Society of the Friends of Science in 1894 

 he spoke as follo^vs : 



When Bastian created bacteria from an infusion of turnips 

 with rotten cheese in the nineteenth century he was, in this 

 matter, just as much of an empiricist as was van Helmont in the 

 sixteenth century, when he created mice from flour and dirty 

 rags. At least I know of no physical or chemical laws which 

 might lead one to prefer the stinking mixtures of the nineteenth 

 century empiricists to the sluttish mixtures of the sixteenth 

 century one. Attempts to produce spontaneous generation in the 

 nineteenth century are not necessarily superior to such attempts 

 made in the sixteenth century ; in fact, they are equally far from 

 the basic ideas which characterise the scientific thought of our 

 times. 



Furthermore, while arguing with Borodin, Timiryazev 

 declared : 



So you pick out two or three foolhardy adventurers with the 

 ideas and mentality of the sixteenth century, going astray in the 

 middle of the nineteenth century ; you see in them the represen- 

 tatives of contemporary science and hail their failure as the 

 ' misfiring of the nineteenth century '. Is that quite fair?* 



563 



This impassioned reply by Timiryazev is also fully applic- 

 able to the empiricists of the present day, the adherents of 

 spontaneous generation who, according to their way of think- 

 ing, are rushing to the defence of materialism and who only 

 delude themselves and others with their experiments. Having 

 been concerned with the problem of the origin of life for 

 many years, I have received and still receive a large number 

 of letters 'with descriptions of different instances of spon- 



