34$ LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. |xv. 



In fact, the main concern of Harvey's wonderful little 

 treatise is not with generation, in the physiological 

 sense, at all, but with development; and his great 

 object is the establishment of the doctrine of epi- 

 genesis. 



The first distinct enunciation of the hypothesis that 

 all living matter has sprung from preexisting living 

 matter, came from a contemporary, though a junior, of 

 Harvey, a native of that country, fertile in men great 

 in all departments of human activity, which was to 

 intellectual Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, what Germany is in the nineteenth. It was 

 in Italy, and from Italian teachers, that Harvey re- 

 ceived the most important part of his scientific edu- 

 cation. And it was a student trained in the same 

 schools, Francesco Kedi — a man of the widest know 

 ledge and most versatile abilities, distinguished alike as 

 scholar, poet, physician, and naturalist — who, just two 

 hundred and two years ago, published his " Esperienze 

 intorno alia Generazione degl' Insetti," and gave to the 

 world the idea, the growth of which it is my purpose 

 to trace. Eedi's book went through five editions in 

 twenty years ; and the extreme simplicity of his ex- 

 periments, and the clearness of his arguments, gained 

 for his views, and for their consequences, almost uni- 

 versal acceptance. 



Redi did not trouble himself much with speculative 

 considerations, but attacked particular cases of what 

 was supposed to be " spontaneous generation r experi- 



proveniant." Again, in " De Uteri Membranis " : — " In cimctorum viven- 

 tium generatione (sicut diximus) hoc solenne est, ut ortum ducunt a pri- 

 mordio aliquo, quod turn materiam turn efficiendi potestatem in se habet: 

 sitque adeo id, ex quo et a quo quicquid nascitur, ortum suum ducat. 

 Tale primordium in aninialibus (sive ah aliis generantihus proveniant, sive 

 8ponte, aut ex putredine nasceniur) est humor in tunica aliqua aut puta- 

 mine conclusus." Compare also what Eedi has to say respecting Harvey's 

 opinions, "Esperienze," p. 11. 



