SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 131 



living. Experiments in this direction may hitherto have 

 failed from want of skill or care, or proper means at the 

 command of those who conducted them. Yet it is not 

 too much to ask of men renowned in science, that in 

 pointing out the errors, they should abstain from dis- 

 couraging the efforts. 



Let it not be thought irreligious to anticipate the 

 possible establishment of the supposition now under 

 discussion. It cannot be irreverent to think that the 

 bestowal of life upon a particle of matter too minute for 

 human eye to see, requires no more special apparatus 

 than that allotted to the exquisite crystals of the frost. 

 ' Out of whose womb came the ice ? and the hoary frost 

 of heaven, who hath gendered it ? J Yet in the work- 

 manship of these a Divine hand is to the full as visible 

 as in a diatom or a puff-ball. That the life-giving 

 energy should have been exhausted in a single effort, 

 is contrary beyond doubt to the analogy of religion, 

 whatever may be thought of the analogy of nature. 



On the other hand, let it not be thought unscientific 

 to advocate the claims of an unproved hypothesis. It 

 is the nature of hypotheses to be unproved. As they 

 gather proof, the hypothetical becomes a theory. At 

 length the theory goes on to demonstration. The use 

 of hypotheses has often been explained. The human 

 mind is easily exhausted by the observation of numerous 

 incoherent facts. It is impelled to arrange and classify, 

 to find some thread or threads of association on which 

 the facts may be strung, some principle on which they 

 may be parcelled out into groups. The arrangement 



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