260 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



selves. In 1809 appeared the ' Philosophic Zoologique' 

 of Lamarck, in which he expressed himself strongly in 

 favour of the spontaneous origination of Life declaring 

 that matter was continually changing, not only in regard 

 to its states of combination, but also changing in its 

 nature that it was now passing from the living state 

 into a lifeless one, and now again assuming the forms 

 and properties of living matter under the combined and 

 mystic influence of heat, light, electricity, and moisture. 

 c These transitions,' he said, c from life to death and 

 from death to life, evidently form part of an immense 

 circle of all kinds of changes to which, in the course 

 of time, all physical substances are submitted.' But 

 such a mode of origin was only possible, as he thought, 

 for the lowest kinds of living things. This is expressed 

 in the following passage, which he also prints in 

 italics : c La nature a Faide de la chaleur, de la lumtere, 

 de Felectricite^ et de Fhumtdite'^ forme des generations spon- 

 tanees ou directes a Vextremite de chaque regne des corps 

 vivantfj ou se trouvent les plus simples de ces corps' Soon 

 afterwards, two philosophers, Cabanis and Oken, also 

 declared their belief in the possibility of a new evolu- 

 tion of life out of dead inanimate matter. According 

 to Oken, c the animal body is only an edifice of mo- 

 nads,' and c putrefaction is nothing more than the dis- 

 aggregation of the monads, and a return to the primi- 

 tive condition of the animal kingdom.' Then fol- 

 lowed other distinguished naturalists, amongst whom we 

 may mention Bory St. Vincent, Bremser, Tiedemann, 



