SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 241 



merely cease to be in a condition for receiving life and will ultimately 

 decompose. 



I have already shown in my Mémoires de Physique et d'Histoire 

 naturelle, p. 250, that life may be suspended for some time and after- 

 wards resimaed. 



I here wish to observe that preparation for life may be made either 

 by an organic act, or by the direct agency of nature without any such 

 act ; so that certain bodies, without possessing life, are yet made 

 ready for its reception by an impression, which does no doubt trace 

 out in these bodies the earliest outlines of organisation. 



What indeed is sexual reproduction but an act for achieving ferti- 

 lisation ? What again is fertilisation but an act preparatory to life, 

 an act in short which disposes the parts of a body for the reception 

 and enjoyment of life ? 



We know that in an unfertihsed egg we yet find a gelatinous body 

 which presents a complete external resemblance to a fertiUsed embryo, 

 and is indeed nothing else than the germ previously existing in the egg 

 although it has not been fertilised. 



Yet what is the unfertilised germ of an egg but an almost inorganic 

 body,— a body not prepared internally for the reception of hfe and 

 incapable of acquiring life even by the most complete incubation ? 



The fact is generally known that every body which receives life, 

 or which receives the first outlines of organisation preparing it for the 

 possession of life, is at the time necessarily in a gelatinous or muci- 

 laginous state ; so that the containing parts of this body have the 

 weakest coherence and the greatest flexibility possible, and are con- 

 sequently in the highest possible condition of suppleness. 



This must necessarily have been the case : the sohd parts of the body 

 must have been in a state closely aUied to fluids, in order that the 

 disposition, which makes the internal parts of the body ready for 

 life, may be easily achieved. 



Now it seems to me certain that sexual fertiUsation is nothing else 

 than an act for establishing a special disposition in the internal parts 

 of a gelatinous body ; a disposition which consists in a particular 

 arrangement and distension of the parts, without which the body in 

 question could not receive life. 



For this purpose it is enough that a subtle penetrating vapour, 

 which escapes from the fertiUsing material, should be insinuated into 

 the gelatinous corpuscles capable of receiving it ; that it should spread 

 throughout its parts and by its expansive movement break up the 

 adhesion between these parts, and so complete the organisation 

 already begun and dispose the corpuscles for the reception of life, 

 that is of the movements constituting life. 



