1889.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 15 



the doctrine is utterly discredited. But my position here is so 

 well known that I need not dwell upon it further." 



Like Virchow, Bastian urges upon evolutionists of the Tyn- 

 dall school the inconsistency of their position on the question of 

 abiogenesis, but, instead of calling upon them to abandon the 

 idea of an unbroken chain of development, on account of the 

 weakness or absence of this link, he attempts to rally them to 

 the defence of the faith in the link not only as existing in the 

 past but as holding as strongly as ever to-day. He says : " the 

 time is doubtless not far distant when it will be a source of much 

 wonder that those who had already heartily adopted the evolu- 

 tion philosophy could, even in the face of facts long ago known, 

 stop short of a belief in the present and continual occurrence 

 of archebiosis and heterogenesis. Do not the very simplest 

 forms of life abound at the present day, and would the evolu- 

 tionist really have us believe that such forms are direct continu- 

 ations of an equally structureless matter which has existed for 

 millions and millions of years without having undergone any 

 differentiation ? Would he have us believe that the simplest and 

 most structureless Amoeba of the present day can boast of aline 

 of ancestors stretching back to such far remote periods that in 

 comparison with them the primaeval men were but as things of 

 yesterday ? The notion is surely preposterously absurd ; or, if 

 true, the fact would be sufficient to overthrow the very first 

 principles of their own evolution philosophy." 



Sir William Thomson saw the difficulties involved in this mat- 

 ter and took a bold course to escape them. In his presidential 

 address to the British Association, in 187 1, he expressed his 

 willingness to adopt, as an article of scientific faith, true through 

 all space and through all time, " that life proceeds from life and 

 from nothing but life ; " but, as he also saw the logical necessity 

 for a beginning of the living chain upon the earth, he gave it as 

 his judgment that the progenitors of all present organized 

 beings about us were introduced to this globe on " moss-grown 

 fragments from the ruins of another world." This might be 

 called the Theory of Inoculation. 



But we have heard Professor Tyndall remark that " to doubt 

 the experimental proof of a fact and to deny its possibility are 

 two different things." And this is, in substance, the burden of 

 Professor Huxley's presidential address to the British Associa- 



