COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



entific world. 1 On the other hand, the fate 

 of the theory of archebiosis, in the shape in 

 which it is held by Dr. Bastian, depends upon 

 the issue of a series of experiments of extra- 

 ordinary delicacy and difficulty, — experiments 

 which are of value only when performed by 

 scientific experts of consummate training, and 

 which the soundest critic of inductive methods 

 must find it perilous to interpret with confi- 

 dence, unless he has had something of the train- 

 ing of an expert himself. For however easy 

 it may seem to the uninitiated to shut up an 

 organizable solution so securely that organic 

 germs from the atmosphere cannot even be 

 imagined capable of gaining access to it, this is 

 really one of the most arduous tasks which an 

 experimenter has ever had set before him. Yet 

 to such rigour of exclusion is the inquirer forced 

 who aims at settling the question by the direct 

 application of the Method of Difference. And 

 thus the question at issue is reduced to that 

 unpromising state in which both parties to the 

 dispute are called upon to perform the appar- 

 ently hopeless task of proving a negative. When 

 living things appear in the isolated solution, the 

 adherents of the germ-theory are always able to 

 point out some imaginable way in which germs 

 might have got in. On the other hand, when 



1 I am here anticipating the argument of the two following 

 chapters. 



3S& 



