158 CATHOLIC WRITERS AND 



science and devoutness as a Catholic nothing need 

 be said. 



It is quite unnecessary to devote any considera- 

 tion here to the character of Pasteur's experi- 

 ments, for they have become a matter of common 

 knowledge to all educated persons. Let it suffice 

 to say that they were on the lines first laid down 

 by Redi and greatly elaborated by Spallanzani, 

 namely the exclusion from the fluids or other 

 substances under examination of all possible 

 contamination by minute organisms in the air. 

 Spallanzani knew nothing of these organisms ; 

 they were not discovered until many years after 

 his death. But he surmised that there was some- 

 thing which brought corruption into the fluids ; 

 he excluded that something, with the result that 

 the fluids remained untainted. From our point 

 of view, however, there are several things to be 

 learnt. In the first place quite a number of 

 ignorant persons have thought that the discovery 

 of spontaneous generation would upset religious 

 dogmata. That of course is quite absurd. From 

 what has been said above it will be seen that St. 

 Thomas Aquinas in common with all the men of 

 learning of his day fully believed in it, as did 

 Needham, another ecclesiastic as to whose ortho- 

 doxy there is no doubt. Further, the entire 

 controversy is a complete confutation of the false 

 allegation that between Catholicism and science 

 there is a great gulf set. There have been few 

 longer and more remarkable controversies in the 

 history of science, and scarce any other if indeed 

 any other which has such important bearings 



