1889.] NEW YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 13 



And not so Doctor Bastian. They and their followers are wont 

 to insist that the only doctrine of original generation, which 

 falls in with a proper theoretic acceptance of Evolution, is that 

 of an archebiosis not only applicable to a past time but also 

 valid at the present. This is the theme of Doctor Bastian's 

 vigorous, but not always trustworthy, writings. In his work on 

 "The Beginnings of Life," after treating of solutions containing 

 unstable matter acting the part of a ferment and producing the 

 conditions favorable to " life-giving changes," and expressing 

 his expectation that in a short time " some solution of saline 

 substances may be discovered capable of retaining its power of 

 passing through life-evolving changes, even after having been 

 subjected, within hermetically sealed vessels, to very high tem- 

 peratures," he goes on to say: " These considerations are replete 

 with interest. They insensibly lead us on to the enquiry, as to 

 whether living things can now originate upon the surface of our 

 globe after the same manner, in which alone (in accordance with 

 scientific teachings and the evolution hypothesis) they could 

 have originated, in those far remote ages, when what we call 

 * Life ' first began to dawn upon the still heated surface of the 

 earth. Before organic materials of the ordinary kind could ex- 

 ist, organisms must have been present to produce them. Organ- 

 izable compounds of a certain kind must nevertheless have pre- 

 ceded organisms. And just as chemists are now able to build 

 up a great number of so-called organic compounds in their labo- 

 ratories, so it seems almost certain that some such mobile com- 

 pounds may have been evolved, by the agency of natural forces 

 alone acting on the heated surface of the earth, at a period an- 

 terior to the advent of living things." 



But the Bastian and Haeckel school are just now in a hopeless 

 minority. The great majority of professed evolutionists belong 

 to the school of Huxley, Pasteur and Tyndall, whose views were 

 in a general way expressed by the last-named in his celebrated 

 Belfast address, in which he said : " 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 com- 

 mon example, and accept testimony because it falls in with our 

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



