228 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 
are used and perhaps in some degree even to 
himself for overlooking the possible malignant in- 
fluence of old hay. 
“The worst of this kind of reasoning is not 
merely that it may be resorted to on one side as 
well as on the other, but that it tends to restore the 
habit of thought which once kept science dead for 
many centuries—the habit of appealing to authority 
in place of facts. Professor Tyndall may, or may 
not, ultimately prove to be on the right side, but we 
crave some other reason for it than the meré 
assertion that his undoubtedly high authority as an 
experimentalist (backed by Pasteur as to part of 
his experiments and contradicted by him as to the 
rest) entitles him to treat with contempt the counter- 
authority of Bastian, Sanderson, Huizinga, and 
Conn. * 
! In further illustration of some of the difficulties with which I had 
to contend, it seems worth mentioning that at the time while these 
discussions were going on Professor Huxley was one of the Secretaries 
of the Royal Society, Professor Tyndall was his intimate friend, and 
both were strong supporters of M. Pasteur, the truth of whose 
doctrines I had dared to question. My memoir entitled “ Researches 
illustrative of the Physico-Chemical Theory of Fermentation, and 
of the Conditions favouring Archebiosis in previously Boiled Fluids,” 
was read in June 1876, and an Abstract of it was published in the 
“Proceedings ” of the Society for that month, while the memoir itself 
was not printed, and was consigned to the “‘ Archives ” of the Society. 
In the following December communications from Sir William Roberts 
and Professor Tyndall, in supposed refutation of my experiments, were 
published with the least possible delay ; as also was another com- 
. munication from Professor Tyndall in February of the following year. 
His two long memoirs also were published 27 ex¢enso, and as speedily 
as possible, in the * Philosophical Transactions” for 1876 and 1877. 

