30 SPERMATIC PARTICLES. 



the production of a new being are in exact accordance with the importance of that 

 process. To these difficulties may be added those of the minuteness and delicacy of the 

 objects. One would suppose that these latter difficulties might have been done away in 

 the present condition of optical science. In some respects they have been, but in others 

 they never have been, and never can be. It is rather a remarkable fact, that most of 

 the material objects actively concerned in the processes of reproduction have a delicacy 

 such as is nowhere else found, and such as evades our correct appreciation of their 

 character by any mode of illumination. So that, while the grosser parts (if I may so 

 call them) in this department are well understood, it has been within the few past 

 years only that those of a more minute, and perhaps, on that very account, of a more 

 important character, have been pursued. 



The study of the growth of the impregnated germ has a counterpart at least as 

 important in the study of the means of that impregnation. 



Every thing connected with our existence is enveloped in wonder, and the man of 

 science, standing on material facts, is continually brought to the knowledge of the truth, 

 that he can go no farther. However this may be, and however wonderful all around us 

 may seem, yet the mind recognizes degrees of these wonders and of our ignorance, and 

 this according as they are with or without analogy, or have or have not preliminary facts 

 with which we may start. And I do not hesitate to affirm, that the fact that the simple, 

 minute particles of one being should, by the mere agency of contact, not only give 

 rise to a living whole, but in this way convey to it many of the moral and physical 

 properties of the being of which it comes, — all this has a wonder about it more mys- 

 terious than any other phenomenon with which the man of science has to do. 



It is for this reason that I have for a long time thought, that a course of study to 

 ascertain the real nature of these fec.undating particles of the male, the Spermatozoa, 

 has an importance paramount to that of what may be called the secondary processes, 

 included under the name Embryology. 



Although attention to the study of the Spermatozoa dates back a long time, yet it is 

 within a few years only that researches of value have been made. I know of no better 

 example in science how a single false conception of an object is a source of constant 

 retardation of its progress, than that furnished by the Spermatozoa. The notion that 

 they are animals, adopted when they were first known, and continued until within a 

 few years, was of itself a sufficient bias against any knowledge of their true char- 

 acter. Such has been the opinion of Czermak,* who regarded them as Vibrios ; of 



• Beilrdge zu Lehre von den Spermatozoiden. Vienna, 1833. 



