Ii6 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



confess my own utter inability to understand what 

 reasons can be adduced in support of so contradictory a 

 doctrine. Reason alone might lead to its rejection, 

 even if careful and repeated experiments had not 

 shown it to be erroneous. 



No reproductive elements are cast off by the crystal, 

 because this is a statical aggregate which undergoes no 

 continuous series of molecular actions. Its constituent 

 units always tend to fall into a condition of polar 

 equilibrium ; and when occasional changes occur, they 

 are always due to extrinsic agencies. Reproductive 

 elements are, however, frequently and of necessity 

 thrown off from the organism, because its polarities are 

 often too complex to admit of an equilibrium being 

 established: a current and continuous molecular re- 

 arrangement goes on, as a result of which, when an 

 approximate equilibrium is otherwise impossible, certain 

 portions of its constituent matter tend to aggregate 

 round new centres, which become independent and 

 ultimately by a continuance of the same action separate 

 from the parent organism — as ^ conidia ' or ^ spores.' 



These views, which flow as a necessary consequence 

 from the doctrines of evolution, have now, by the results 

 of the experiments detailed in previous chapters, re- 

 ceived the only warrant which was needed. Having 

 learned that new living matter can originate de novo 

 after the same fashion as new crystalline matter_, the 

 only doctrine which at present seems open to us is 

 that which has just been explained. The forms and 



