CHAPTER VIII 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE 1 



A MID the chaos of ideas concerning vital 

 /-\ phenomena which prevailed until quite 

 *- ■* recent times, it was hardly strange that 

 organisms, even of a high order of complex- 

 ity, should have been supposed to be now and 

 then directly evolved from lifeless matter, under 

 favourable circumstances. Every reader of an- 

 cient literature will remember how Aristaeus 

 succeeded in replacing his lost swarm of bees ; 

 and the sanction thus accorded by so erudite a 

 poet as Virgil to the popular belief in the gen- 

 eration of insects from putrescent meat is good 

 evidence that the impossibility of such an oc- 

 currence had not yet been suspected, or at least 

 had never been duly appreciated. Still more im- 

 portant is the testimony of Lucretius — who, as 

 Professor Huxley well says, " had drunk deeper 

 of the scientific spirit than any other poet of 

 ancient or modern times except Goethe " — 

 when he alludes to the primordial generation 

 of plants and animals by the universal mother, 

 Earth. It is, however, straining words some- 



1 [See Introduction, § 18.] 

 342 



