130 SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 



only multiplying a million-fold the difficulty, if it be 

 a difficulty, involved in that hypothesis. Unless we 

 suppose the globe to have always existed, and always to 

 have been tenanted by creatures endowed with life, we 

 are forced to believe in the occurrence at some time or 

 other of what, in the language of science, must have 

 been spontaneous generation. As there is no historical 

 reason for confining such an occurrence to any particular 

 era ; as science can give no reason why, if it happened 

 once, it should not happen an indefinite number of 

 times; as all analogy is in favour of uniform laws of 

 nature rather than exceptional surprises ; and, lastly, as 

 numerous phenomena that have to do with the repro- 

 duction and maintenance of life are all continuous, and 

 not interjectional it seems at least an open question 

 whether the origin of life itself may not also be 

 sometimes, or even continually repeated. For, imagine 

 what conditions we will to have prevailed when the 

 elementary substances coalesced, out of which were 

 compounded the first living being, it is difficult to 

 imagine that the same conditions should never have 

 recurred to produce a similar result, since the conditions 

 are so far limited, that they must have been consistent, 

 not only with the birth, but with the life after its birth, 

 of that most antique animalcule. So many wonderful 

 and hitherto unsuspected effects in the working of 

 Nature have of late years been unveiled, so much of 

 marvellous analysis successfully carried out, that it 

 would surely be superstitious to despair of finding fresh 

 links in the chain that binds together the lifeless and the 



