NINETEENTH CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS 45 



and inalienable property of matter in general. If we accept 

 this, the spontaneous generation of living creatures follows 

 ex hypothesi. If all matter is endowed with life, if there is, 

 in principle, no qualitative difference between organisms 

 and objects that are inorganic in nature, then living creatures 

 must inevitably arise spontaneously, even in the absence 

 of other living creatures. Hylozoism without spontaneous 

 generation is absurd. It is thus inconsistent for materialists 

 to make use of the theory of the eternity of life to explain 

 the impossibility of spontaneous generation. This leads 

 inevitably to idealism. 



The emergence of hypotheses concerning the 

 eternity of life in the nineteenth century. 



Clear examples of this attitude are found in the pronounce- 

 ments of a number of authoritative scientists of the late 

 nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of these 

 scientists regarded the experiments of Pasteur as proof of 

 the absolute impossibility of the metamorphosis of inorganic 

 materials into living organisms. In 1871 the distinguished 

 British physicist W. Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, wrote in 

 this connection : " Dead matter cannot become living without 

 coming under the influence of matter previously alive. This 

 seems to be as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravita- 

 tion."^ Hence followed the complete autonomy of living 

 creatures, and consequently also life must be regarded as 

 eternal. 



The famous German physiologist H. Helmholtz said*: " It 

 appears to me to be a fully correct procedure, if all our 

 efforts fail to cause the production of organisms from non- 

 living matter, to raise the question whether life has ever 

 arisen, whether it is not just as old as matter. . . ." 



The French botanist van Tieghem wrote in his textbook^ : 

 " The vegetation of the earth had a beginning and will have 

 an end, but the vegetation of the universe, like the universe 

 itself, is eternal ". 



We meet similar opinions among a number of other scien- 

 tists who, proceeding from the empirically established fact 

 of the impossibility of spontaneous generation, proclaimed 



