22 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 



A child can surely be taught that a little bit 

 of soft transparent stuff takes up matter around 

 it, which is not like it, and converts this into 

 matter like itself, and so increases in size, and 

 that it divides and subdivides, so that from 

 one mass many masses result. This is what 

 goes on in the development of the simplest 

 living thing and in man himself. Not only is 

 the process common to every known form of 

 living matter, but it is peculiar to living matter, 

 and is not known to occur in matter in any other 

 state. And this matter came from pre-existing 

 matter in a like state ! But the Harveian maxim, 

 " Omne vivum ex ovo," says the Harveian 

 Orator, " cannot perhaps be now maintained in 

 its integrity ;" for science occupies itself with 

 the " possibilities of occasional automatic gene- 

 ration" ! Men have indeed long been labouring 

 at such possibilities of the imagination, but the 

 experimental spontaneous ovum has yet to be 

 brought forth. 



Taking the marvellous range of living beings, 

 from the simplest living speck which grows and 

 multiplies under the most varying conditions, 

 some having been regarded hitherto as incom- 

 patible with life in any form, to that living 



