46 



NATURE 



{May 1 8, 1876 



not a part of the theory of evolution, and is expressly 

 repudiated by Mr. Spencer and Mr. Darwin. Now, to those 

 who know nothing about a " principle of organisation/' 

 there is no difficulty in conceiving lowest organisms re- 

 maining lowest organisms through a time indefinitely 

 long. Indeed, what Dr. Bastian teaches concerning his 

 world of Ephemeromorphs makes the conception very 

 easy. " The complexly-interrelated individuals consti- 

 tuting this vast underlying plexus of infusorial and cryp- 

 togamic life must," he says, "remain wholly uninfluenced, 

 so far as their form and structure are concerned, by what 

 Mr. Darwin has termed ' Natural Selection.' " Surely it 

 is quite as easy to conceive the mass of these ephemero- 

 morphs going on for ever in an endless round as it is to 

 picture one of them here and there setting out on its 

 course of ascending development. But though Dr. Bas- 

 tian, after proving his case, may have been somewhat 

 zealous to convince the world and to confound his adver- 

 saries, no dispassionate reader of his books can fail to be 

 struck with the simplicity and clearness of the reasoning, 

 and the truly scientific candour of the author. 



The complete argument is contained in this book, which 

 may be profitably read by those who have not time 

 to go through the larger work. Since the publication 

 of that work some progress has been made. " Well- 

 informed men of science," says Dr. Bastian, " no longer 

 doubt that swarms of bacteria can be made to appear 

 within sealed glass vessels containing suitable fluids, after 

 the vessels and their contents have been exposed to the 

 temperature of boiling water." That is, Dr. Bastian's 

 experiments, which were at first disa-edited, have been 

 verified by other workers, some of them with no bias 

 towards a belief in spontaneous generation. But with 

 this fact all well-informed men of science have not ac-. 

 cepted Dr. Bastian's conclusion that these living things 

 are evolved from dead matter. Not believing in spon. 

 taneous generation, they first supposed that Dr. Bastian 

 must have bungled and deceived himself, because they 

 had every reason to believe that living matter could not 

 resist the temperature of boiling water. They are now 

 obliged to admit that Dr. Bastian was not mistaken. 

 Some, however, admitting this, prefer to give up their 

 well- supported belief in the killing power of boiling water, 

 rather than break with the sacred dogma, otmte vivum 

 ex vivo, in support of which they can now urge no single 

 fact or argument. 



In the treatise before us Dr. Bastian collects a great 

 deal of evidence as to the amount of heat requisite to 

 destroy life, which, summed up, amounts to this : " that 

 all known forms of living matter with which accurate 

 experiment has been made invariably perish at or below 

 140° F." And he details experiments of his own, in 

 which living organisms appeared " within closed flasks 

 which had been previously heated to 270-275° F. for 

 twenty minutes, and to temperatures of over 230° F. for 

 one hour." Having done this much, Dr. Bastian might, 

 we think, rest satisfied for the present. If his readers 

 fail to appreciate his facts, the little lessons in logic to 

 which he occasionally treats them will not, we fear, help 

 them much. We would also observe that though error may 

 die hard, yet, if he has given it its death-wound, there is 

 no great purpose to be served by triumphing over its last 

 struggles and agonies. " Victorious along the whole line'' 



may now be said of spontaneous generation with much 

 greater truth than it was asserted by Prof. Huxley of the 

 contrary view in 1870. With the facts as they now stand, it 

 appears to us that no adverse criticism can do anything to 

 shake the position which Dr. Bastian has given to the doc- 

 trine of the de nevo origin of life. Some of the attempts that 

 have been made to escape Dr. Bastian's conclusion, after 

 admitting his facts, are curiosities in the way of scientific 

 discussion. Now it is suggested that germs may have 

 been protected from the destroying heat in the inside of 

 enormous lumps almost as large as a pin's head. Again, 

 and still belter, that the germs of bacteria may escape 

 death by reason of their excessive smallness. This last is 

 a very happy thought, and deserves to be thoroughly 

 worked out. 



In conclusion, we would impress on those of our readers 

 who may take some interest in this question, that there 

 are special reasons why they ought not to rest satisfied 

 with any second-hand statement. If they would know 

 Dr. Bastian's case, they must read his book, which, thinks 

 an American philosopher, Mr. Fiske, " may perhaps mark 

 an epoch in biology hardly less important than that which 

 was inaugurated by Mr. Darwin's * Origin of Species.'" 



Such was the .light in which the question presented 

 itself to one who, before studying Dr. Bastian's works, 

 had passively accepted the doctrine ojnne vivtun ex vivo. 

 Only when we read Prof. Tyndall's paper of Jan. 13 did 

 we find how far we were mistaken in supposing that the 

 high honour of having settled a great question and added 

 an important truth to our stock of science was about 

 to be awarded to Dr. Bastian by universal consent. 

 Certainly if we are to take Prof. Tyndall — a science 

 teacher for whom we have the highest respect and 

 admiration — as our guide and instructor on this sub- 

 ject, we might well blush at j^the youthful precipitation 

 with which we threw ourselves into the arms of Dr. 

 Bastian. We can only say that we had conscientiously 

 tried to follow the controversy, and to make ourselves ac- 

 quainted with the alleged and accepted facts. We honestly 

 believed, and still believe, that we were making a simple 

 statement of fact when we said, that Dr. Bastian's experi- 

 ments, which were at first discredited, have been verified 

 by other workers, some of them with no bias .towards a 

 belief in spontaneous generation, and that this was known 

 to " well-informed men of science." When Prof. Tyndall 

 says that he was " certainly not among the number " to 

 whom the truth of Dr. Bastian's assertions was known, the 

 phrase is slightly ambiguous. Of course Prof. Tyndall 

 does not mean that he did not know that Dr. Burdon- 

 Sanderson, for example, had by careful experiment estab- 

 lished to his own satisfaction, though contrary to his 

 expectation, that Dr. Bastian was accurate in his state- 

 ment of fact. That Prof. Tyndall supposed it piobable 

 that Dr. Bastian'^ and Dr. Burdon-Sanderson had com- 

 mitted " errors either of preparation or observation," and 

 that he himself, were he to try, might escape such errors, 

 is evidenced by his undertaking the course of experiments 

 which for the present makes the question once more 

 one of evidence. It was in this sense that Prof. Tyndall 

 "did not know;" but in this sense it would have been 

 an impertinence on our part, and even on the part of 

 most "well-informed men of science" "not to know." 



One word remains to be said. The question at issue is 



