(492) (October, 
NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
The Beginnings of Life; being some Account of the Nature, 
Modes of Origin, and Transformations of Lower Organisms. 
By H. Cuartton Bastian, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of 
the Royal College of Physicians, Professor of Pathological 
Anatomy in University College, London, Physician to Uni- 
versity College Hospital, Assistant-Physician to the National 
Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. In Two Vols. 
London: Macmillan and Co. 1872. 
QUESTIONS concerning the nature and origin of life have for 
many years exercised the highest powers of the greatest minds. 
It has always been admitted that at a certain point of the inves- 
tigation our ability of realising the great mystery of vitality 
ceases, and we are constrained to admit that— 
“ All that we know is—nothing can be known.” 
So 
To attempt to bridge over the gap which divides the living 
from the dead by patient and profound research is very laudable 
and honourable. Experimental evidence has, in late years, 
made an appreciable advance in this direction; but yet the gap 
is very wide, and there is much danger that a too hasty general- 
isation from as yet imperfect data may do harm, even to those 
who have made the subject their special study—much more to 
those who belong to the large class of scientific dilettanti. The 
author has presented us with a work of laborious reasoning, and 
records of many instructive and valuable experiments. He tells 
us that rather more than three years ago he was content— 
‘* Stare super vias antiquas ;”’ 
but his microscopic investigations led him to renounce many of 
his old prepossessions for a new doctrine, which now he advo- 
cates with the ardour of a convert. 
Of the subject opened out, it is obvious that a small portion 
only can be adequately discussed. The doctrine which the 
author especially urges is the possibility of the origination of 
living beings from the elements of dead organic matter. Until 
the present time this view has been denominated the Theory of 
Heterogenesis, or Spontaneous Generation. ‘The latter term, 
however, certainly seems inapplicable when the idea of volition 
is excluded. Dr. Bastian has therefore employed the less 
objectionable coinage Archebiosis, which indicates the process of 
passage of the non-living into the living, owing to the occurrence 
of certain new molecular combinations. 
The author commences with a Prolegomenon concerning the 
nature of vitality, designed to show that philosophically there can 
be no abrupt Jine of demarcation between dead matter and living 
