

76 WHAT IS LIFE 



shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists 

 to prove that life in our day has ever appeared 

 independently of antecedent life." 



Huxley, though he thought that spontaneous 

 generation was "a necessary corollary from Dar- 

 win's views if legitimately carried out," 1 yet ad- 

 mitted that in the controversy between biogenesists 

 and abiogenesists the former were " victorious all 

 along the line". 2 Virchow, the author of the 

 Cellular Pathology, one of the greatest men of 

 science of the last century, said in 1887 : 3 " Never 

 has a living being, or even a living element let us 

 say, a living cell been found, of which it could be 

 predicated that it was the first of its species. Nor 

 have any fossil remains ever been found of which it 

 could ever be likely that it belonged to a being the 

 first of its kind, or produced by spontaneous 

 generation." 



Two recent authorities will serve to close this 

 catena of quotations. Hertwig in his recent 

 magistral work 4 says : " In the existing condition of 

 Science there is little hope that any worker will be 

 able to produce the simplest manifestation of life 

 in any artificial way from non-living matter. He 



1 Letter to Charles Kingsley, Life and Letters, i., 352. 



2 Critiques and Addresses, Presidential Address to British 

 Association. 



3 In a address delivered at Wiesbaden. 

 *Allegem. Biologie, 2te Aufl., s. 263. 



