xv.] SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 347 



wide spread and so fixed, that Saint Paul appeals to 

 it in one of the most splendid outbursts of his fervid 

 eloquence : — 



u Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die." l 



The proposition that life may, and does, proceed 

 from that which has no life, then, was held alike by 

 the philosophers, the poets, and the people, of the 

 most enlightened nations, eighteen hundred years ago ; 

 and it remained the accepted doctrine of learned and 

 unlearned Europe, through the middle ages, down 

 even to the seventeenth century. 



It is commonly counted among the many merits of 

 our great countryman, Harvey, that he was the first to 

 declare the opposition of fact to venerable authority 

 in this, as in other matters; but I can discover no 

 justification for this wide-spread notion. After care- 

 ful search through the " Exercitationes de Generatione " 

 the most that appears clear to me is, that Harvey be- 

 lieved all animals and plants to spring from what he 

 terms a "primordivm vegetate" a phrase which may 

 nowadays be rendered " a vegetative germ ; " and this, 

 he says, is " oviforme" or " egg-like ; ' not, he is care- 

 ful to add, that it necessarily has the shape of an egg, 

 but because it has the constitution and nature of one. 

 That this " primordium, ovifonne" must needs, in all 

 cases, proceed from a living parent is nowhere ex- 

 pressly maintained by Harvey, though such an opin- 

 ion may be thought to be implied in one or two 

 passages ; while, on the other hand, he does, more 

 than once, use language which is consistent only with 

 a full belief in spontaneous or equivocal generation. 9 



1 1 Corinthians xv. 36. 



2 See the following passage in Exercitatio I.: — "Item sponte nascentia 

 dicuntur ; non quod ex puiredine oriunda sint, sed quod casu, naturaa 

 gponte, et requivoea (ut aiunt) generatione, a parentibns sui dissimilibua 



