220 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [x. 



the corruption of one thing is the birth of another," had 

 its popular embodiment in the notion that a seed dies 

 before the young plant springs from it ; a belief so wide- 

 spread and so fixed, that Saint Paul appeals to it in one 

 of the most splendid outbursts of his fervid eloquence : 



" Thou fool, that which thou so west is not quickened, 

 except it die." 1 



The proposition that life may, and does, proceed from 

 that which has no life, then, was held alike by the 

 philosophers, the poets, and the people, of the most 

 enlightened nations, eighteen hundred years ago ; and it 

 remained the accepted doctrine of learned and unlearned 

 Europe, through the Middle Ages, down even to the 

 seventeenth century. 



It is commonly counted among the many merits of our 

 great countryman, Harvey, that he was the first to declare 

 the opposition of fact to venerable authority in this, as 

 in other matters ; but I can discover no justification for 

 this wide- spread notion. After careful search through 

 the " Exercitationes de G-eneratione," the most that 

 appears clear to me is, that Harvey believed all animals 

 and plants to spring from what he terms a "primordium 

 vegetate'' a phrase which may nowadays be rendered " a 

 vegetative germ ; " and this, he says, is " oviforme" or 

 "egg-like ;" not, he is careful to add, that it necessarily has 

 the shape of an egg, but because it has the constitution 

 and nature of one. That this " primordium oviforme " 

 must needs, in all cases, proceed from a living parent is 

 nowhere expressly maintained by Harvey, though such 

 an opinion may be thought to be implied in one or two 

 passages ; while, on the other hand, he does, more than 

 once, use language which is consistent only with a full 

 belief in spontaneous or equivocal generation. 2 In fact, 



1 1 Corinthians xv. 36. 



" See the following passage in Excrcitatio I.: "Item xfiout-c net seen I it t 



