ORIGIN AND NA TURE OF LIFE 321 



of what was universally believed and taught. Not 

 only was it thought that putrefying flesh gave rise 

 to insects, and other minute animals, but it was the 

 current opinion that different kinds of carrion gen- 

 erated diverse forms of life. Thus, as bees were 

 produced from decomposing beef, so beetles were gen- 

 erated from horseflesh, grass-hoppers from mules, 

 scorpions from crabs, and toads from ducks. Diodo- 

 rus Siculus speaks of multitudes of animals devel- 

 oped from the sun-warmed slime of the Nile valley. 

 Plutarch assures us that the soil of Egypt spontane- 

 ously generates rats, and Pliny is ready to confirm the 

 statement by an example of a rat, half metamorphosed, 

 found in the Thebaid, of which the anterior half was 

 that of a fully developed rodent, while the posterior 

 half was entirely of stone ! The Fathers and the 

 Schoolmen, as we have seen, made no hesitation in 

 accepting the doctrine of spontaneous generation. 

 But while ready to admit abiogenesis as a fact, they 

 gave it a different interpretation from what it had re- 

 ceived from the philosophers and naturalists of Greece 

 and Rome. According to Epicurus : " The earth is 

 the mother of all living things, and from this simple 

 origin not even man is excepted." Brute matter, said 

 the Epicureans as Haeckel and his school now pro- 

 claim generates of its own power both vegetable and 

 animal life ; that is, non-living gives rise to living mat- 

 ter. But Christian philosophy, contrariwise, teaches 

 that it is impossible for inorganic to produce organic 

 matter motuproprio, or by any natural inherent powers 

 it may possess. "The waters, " declares St. Basil, 

 in speaking of the work of creation, " were gifted 



