16 JOURNAL OF THE [January, 



tion in 1870, in which he said : " I must carefully guard myself 

 against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no such 

 thing as abiogenesis ever has taken place in the past, or ever 

 will take place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular 

 physics, and physiology yet in their infancy and every day 

 making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of pre- 

 sumption for any man to say that the conditions under which 

 matter assumes the properties we call ' vital ' may not, some 

 day, be artificially brought together. All I feel justified in 

 affirming is that I see no reason for believing that the feat has 

 been performed yet. And looking back through the prodigious 

 vista of the past, I find no record of the commencement of life, 

 and therefore I am devoid of any means of forming a definite 

 conclusion as to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the 

 scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong 

 foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted absence of 

 evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode in which the 

 existing forms of life have originated, would be using words in a 

 wrong sense. But expectation is permissible where belief is 

 not ; and, if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geo- 

 logically recorded time to the still more remote period when the 

 earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions 

 which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, 

 I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living proto- 

 plasm from not living matter, I should expect to see it appear 

 under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, 

 with the power of determining the formation of new protoplasm 

 from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates, and tar- 

 trates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without the 

 aid of light. That is the expectation to which analogical reas- 

 oning leads me ; but I beg you once more to recollect that I 

 have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of philo-' 

 sophical faith." 



In the case of hybridism Professor Huxley thought experi- 

 mental proof not only desirable but necessary. In the matter of 

 spontaneous generation, however, he is apparently satisfied with 

 "an act of philosophical faith." When discussing the doctrine of 

 natural selection he declared that Mr. Darwin, in order to place 

 his views beyond the reach of all possible assault, ought to be able 

 to demonstrate the possibility of doing artificially what is done 



