282 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence to prove that any 

 form of life can be developed out of matter independently of antecedent life, my 

 reply is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many has been adduced, 

 and that were we to follow a common example, and accept testimony because it 

 falls in with our belief, we should eagerly close with the evidence referred to. 

 But those to whom I refer as having studied this question, believing the evidence 

 offered in favor of ' spontaneous generation ' to be vitiated by error, cannot ac- 

 cept it. They know fall weU that the chemist now prepares from inorganic 

 matter a vast array of substances, which were some time ago regarded as the 

 products solely of vitahty. They are intimately acquainted with the structural 

 power of matter, as evidenced in the phenomena of crystallization. They can 

 justify scientifically their 'belief in its potency, under the proper conditions, to 

 produce organisms. But, in reply to your question, they will frankly admit 

 their inabihty to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be 

 developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life." * 



Three years subsequently it fell to my lot to address the members 

 of the Midland Institute at Birmingham, and a very few ^yords will re- 

 veal the grounds of my reference on that occasion to the " Theory of 

 Descent." " Ten years have elapsed," said Dr. Hooker at Norwich in 

 1868," " since the publication of ' The Origin of Species by Natural 

 Selection,' and it is therefore not too early now to ask what progress 

 that bold theory has made in scientific estimation. Since the ' Origin' 

 appeared it has passed through four English editions,' two American, 

 two German, two French, several Russian, a Dutch, and an Italian. So 

 far from Natural Selection being a thing of the past (the AthencBum 

 had stated it to be so), it is an accepted doctrine with almost every 

 philosophical naturalist, including, it will always be understood, a con- 

 siderable proportion who are not prepared to admit that it accounts for 

 all Mr, Darwin assigns to it." In the following year, at Innspruck, 

 Helmholtz took up the same ground. Another decade has now passed, 

 and he is simply blind who cannot see the enormous progress made by 

 the theory during that time. Some of the outward and visible signs 

 of this advance are readily indicated. The hostility and fear which so 

 long prevented the recognition of Mr. Darwin by his own university 

 have vanished, and this year Cambridge, amid universal acclamation, 

 conferred on him her Doctor's degree. The Academy of Sciences in 

 Paris, which had so long persistently closed its doors against him, has 

 also yielded at last ; while sermons, lectures, and published articles, 

 plainly show that even the clergy have, to a great extent, become ac- 

 climatized to the Darwinian air. My reference to Mr. Darwin in the 

 Birmingham Address was based upon the knowledge that such changes 

 had been accomplished, and were still going on. 



That the lecture of Prof. Virchow can to any practical extent dis- 



* Quoted by Clifford, Nineteenth Century, iii., p. '726. 



* President's Address to the British Association. 



2 Published by Mr. John Murray, the English publisher of Virchow's lecture. Bane 

 and antidote are thus impartially distributed by the same hand. 



