i6 THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 



cleavage, from a previous living organism. Now, the first 

 living things cannot possibly, from the force of the terms, 

 have arisen by biogenesis. They must have had no living 

 parent. Sir Oliver Lodge sees this clearly enough at a later 

 stage. He notices (p. 197) the recent attempts to create 

 life in the laboratory : 



Suppose it was successful [he says], what then? We 

 should then be reproducing in the laboratory a process 

 that must at some past age have occurred on the earth ; 

 for at one time the earth was certainly hot and molten and 

 inorganic, whereas now it swarms with life. 



That is to say, Sir Oliver Lodge on one page tells us that 

 a fact of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation would be a 

 repetition of the process by which the life-story began ages 

 ago ; and on another page he tries to discredit Professor 

 Haeckel for " discarding the facts of biogenesis " and enter- 

 taining the hypothesis of abiogenesis. 



Then Sir Oliver endeavours to extricate himself by a 

 remarkable procedure. It is well to remember that 

 Professor Ray-Lankester had already sharply reprimanded 

 him for his inaccuracy on this very point, and I had pointed 

 out his confusion in the Hibbert. Now, in his mature 

 deliverance, he says that he would be "quite content" if 

 it " could be universally recognised that it is expressly as a 

 hypothesis that Haeckel formulates his conjecture as to the 

 manner of the origin of life." These were my words in the 

 Hibbert. Sir Oliver Lodge replies that Haeckel does not 

 formulate it hypothetically, but dogmatically. On the very 

 page where he makes the point (p. 42) he quotes Haeckel 



