208 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 
the President of the British Association in 1870 gave 
his unqualified support, since it was in reliance upon 
Pasteur’s views and researches principally that he 
proclaimed from his Presidential Chair the doctrine 
omne vivum ex vivo to be “victorious along the 
whole line.” 
If this could be said to have been an impartial 
verdict in 1870, which it certainly was not, a totally 
different verdict will have to be given to-day. Since 
the same year (1870) I have on various occasions, 
and on various evidence, contended that the first, 
and third of these inductions were not good, and 
that the second corollary was neither warranted nor 
true. Additional and final proof of these positions 
has, I venture to think, been supplied in the fore- 
going chapters. I claim, therefore, to have shown 
that the grounds on which M. Pasteur, and the 
scientific world in general, following him, had 
accepted the ‘‘germ-theory of fermentation” and 
rejected the doctrine of “spontaneous generation ” 
were altogether insufficient and in great part 
erroneous —as a wider experience with other 
materials, accurate experiments on the thermal 
death-point of Bacteria and their “spores,” as well 
as new experimental conditions have shown. 
The latest work on this subject emanating from 
the Pasteur Institute has left the evidence almost 
where it was before. Still a little change has been 
made, since Ch. Chamberland, a former assistant of 
Pasteur, and now sub-director of the Institute, in 
his Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Science 
published in 1879, and also in a contribution to 

