THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 249 



being in solutions which had previously contained 

 merely mineral ingredients. This was only possible, 

 he thought, in organic solutions, the matter of which 

 had been previously formed under the influence of Life, 

 and whose properties it still retained 1 . The postulation 

 by Needham of a special ( force vegetative/ and by 

 Buffon of the invariable agency of vital, though imma- 

 terial, 'molecules organiques,' suffice to place them in 

 this same category: they are all persons whose theo- 

 retical views have been framed in such a way as to 

 exclude the possibility of their belief in the origin of 

 the living from the not-living. The possibility of 

 Archebiosis not being one of the elements of their 

 philosophical creed, they would give a different inter- 

 pretation to certain facts which, in the minds of others, 

 might seem to testify to the occurrence of such a process. 

 Seeing that the notion represented by the word 

 c Archebiosis' is one which on account of these theo- 

 retical views does not very often occur in previous 

 writings upon c spontaneous generation,' and seeing 

 how desirable it is to separate this idea from that 



1 Many will, however, rather agree with us in thinking that a mere 

 solution made by infusing animal or vegetable tissues, has apart from 

 germs of living things which it may contain no more title to the 

 epithet * living,' than has any solution of mineral substances a right to 

 such an appellation. For those who hold such opinions, therefore, the 

 appearance of living things in organic solutions (after all pre-existing 

 germs had been destroyed^, should it occur, would be as much a case of 

 the origin of the living from the not-living, as if the new forms of life 

 had appeared, in spite of similar precautions, in solutions containing 

 mere mineral or saline constituents. 



