THE QUESTION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 109 



this, Pasteur was able legitimately to exclaim in his 

 celebrated lecture at the Sorbonne : 



' There is not one circumstance known at the 

 present day which justifies the assertion that micro- 

 scopic organisms come into the world without germs 

 or without parents like themselves. Those who main- 

 tain the contrary have been the dupes of illusions and 

 of ill-conducted experiments, tainted with errors which 

 they know not how either to perceive or to avoid. 

 Spontaneous generation is a chimera.' 



Pasteur was not alone in affirming this fixed con- 

 viction. With the authority of a judge delivering 

 sentence in court, M. Flourens, permanent Secretary 

 of the Academy of Sciences, pronounced these words 

 before the whole Academy : 



'As long as my opinion was not formed I had 

 nothing to say; now it is formed and I can speak. 

 The experiments are decisive. If spontaneous genera- 

 tion be a fact, what is necessary for the production of 

 animalcule? Air and putrescible liquids. Now 

 Pasteur puts together air and putrescible liquids and 

 nothing is produced. Spontaneous generation, then, 

 has no existence. Those who still doubt have failed 

 to grasp the question.' 



But some adversaries remained incredulous. When 

 Pasteur had announced the result of his experiments, 

 and brought before the Academy his series of bulbs, 

 Pouchet and Joly declared that if Pasteur had opened 



