20 THE ORIGIN OF 



A great poet full of lofty ideas, whose works are known by 

 educated men all over the world, by an accident falls and 

 breaks a cord in his body, and at once he is as inanimate, as 

 senseless, and as incapable of anything for good, as the stones he 

 lies on. That head once brim full of knowledge and overflow- 

 ing with song, is now vacant and silent as the tomb, and the 

 key to those chambers of learning the world wondered at, is 

 lost forever. But the mode in which life comes into the world, 

 astonishes us as much, if not more, than the way it disappears. 



We buy a piece of cheese, and in a few days it is teeming 

 with living creatures ; or we lay aside milk for the same term, 

 and the microscope shows us thousands of living organisms. 

 Who were the fathers and mothers of these creatures ? 



M. Dumas in his first Faraday lecture, denied that the 

 chemist with all his endeavours had ever imitated life itself, or 

 would ever be able to produce a living being. " There must be 

 a living seed for a living plant, and a living egg to produce a 

 living animal. These were far above human power, and within 

 the power of God alone." Agassiz also says: "All living 

 beings are born of eggs, and developed from eggs." Did the 

 cow then furnish the eggs from which these organisms grew in 

 the cheese, and the milk ? 



In the " Vestiges of Creation " We find thai a Mr. Crosse, 

 unexpectedly, produced insects while conducting some chemical 

 experiments with silicate of potash, and since that time, 

 numberless experiments have been tried with different materials, 

 ending in similar results. What inference therefore must we 

 draw, but that life is regulated according to some law which 

 God gave to the component materials of this earth, and that 

 when the full conditions required for producing life are fulfilled; 



