THE GENESIS OF LIFE. 157- 



great physiologist thus expresses himself: "It is most 

 apparent that in the generation of the chicken out of the 

 egg, all things are set up and formed with a most singular 

 providence, divine wisdom, and an admirable and incom- 

 prehensible artifice." 



Thus, practically, the origin of living beings from non- 

 living matter was unquestioned prior to Redi's day. With a 

 boldness worthy of his cause, that experimenter turned his 

 attention to the case of the production of maggots in tainted 

 meat. He showed the Florentine philosophers by the ex- 

 periment of placing meat in a jar protected by a gauze 

 cover, that the process of meat-decomposition might be 

 observed to take place in perfection, without the appearance 

 of a single maggot. If these animals originated from the 

 meat, why, asked Redi, do they not appear in the jar ? The 

 answer was not difficult to find ; for one phase of daily 

 experience, hitherto overlooked, came to the aid of the 

 bewildered philosophers. The presence of numerous flies, 

 hovering round the jar, and prevented by the gauze from 

 gaining access to the meat within, supplied the answer to 

 the query. And thus it became clear that one case of 

 spontaneous generation at least could no longer be upheld ; 

 since the maggots in meat were noted to be developed from 

 eggs laid in the meat by the flies ; the subsequent growth of 

 the maggots into the mature insects forming the conclusive 

 proof of the correctness of Redi's observation. 



The overthrow of a long-established belief is no light 

 matter either for the reforming party or for its opponents. 

 Redi accordingly found that his experiments and opinions 

 were not only discredited in many quarters, but were pro- 

 nounced antithetical to the tenets of religion and subversive 

 of the highest interests of man. For the Churchmen of 

 Redi's day were not slow to inform the philosopher that 

 an appeal to Scriptural authority was, in their opinion, 

 sufficient to prove his opinions incorrect. But Redi con- 

 tented himself with an appeal to the inexorable logic of 

 facts, and the repetition of his subsequent experiments 



