PARASITIC ANIMALS. 149 



theory, that their original existence is owing to a 

 purely dynamic (self-potent) process. The im- 

 portance of this subject will perhaps excuse me, if 

 I try in this place to lessen the weight of the con- 

 elusion, that animalcules and other organic bodies 

 are never the result of spontaneous generation,* by 

 some reflections on certain spontaneous generations 

 which are undoubtedly going on in our time, and 

 which, in calling the attention of the reader to the 

 traces of a nascent future creation, may serve to 

 throw some light on the conditions of the former 

 and present ones, as well as to banish the uncouth 

 idea of a ' Deus ex machind;'"^ the uncouth idea, 

 this naturalist means, of inferring the existence of 

 a God from works of consummate skill, from the 

 exquisite mechanism of organic bodies ! 



But by what chain of reasoning does Dr. 

 Weissenborn prove his theory ? Positively, by no 

 arguments at all. He assumes it, but assigns no 

 reasons whatever. He finds certain plants in un- 

 expected situations that is, growing in snow and 

 he asserts that they are, therefore, to be ascribed to 

 spontaneous generation. " For proofs of this new 



* Professor Ehrenberg has succeeded in establishing two great 

 natural laws : 1st. That the animal organization is perfect, in all 

 its principal systems, to the extreme limit of vision assisted by the 

 most powerful microscopes ; 2dly. That microscopic animalcules exer- 

 cise a very great and direct influence on inorganic matter. From the 

 first proposition is derived the conclusion, that no organic bodies can 

 be by possibility their own authors. 



f This refers to the custom of players introducing the gods on the 

 stage of a theatre by means of a machine. 



