106 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 



elusive argument against a natural creation at a time when 

 the earth was vacant of all organic tenantry, if for such a 

 creation any positive arguments can be adduced. 



Secondly, it is far from being certain that the primitive im- 

 parting of life and form to inorganic elements is not a fact of 

 our times. Such a doctrine is not generally received in the 

 scientific world ; but the reasons for rejecting it may at least 

 admit of criticism. The leading one is, that, in a great num- 

 ber of instances where the superficial observers of former 

 times assumed a n on -generative origin for life, (as in the ce- 

 lebrated case in Virgil's fourth Georgic,) either the direct 

 contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have 

 left no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary genera- 

 tion did take place, albeit in a manner which escapes observa- 

 tion. Finding that an erroneous assumption has been formed 

 in many cases, modern inquirers have not hesitated to assume 

 that there can be no case in which generation is not concerned ; 

 which is certainly far from being allowable. There are 

 several persons eminent in science who profess at least to find 

 great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable gene- 

 ration. Dr. Allen Thomson, one of the professors in the 

 Edinburgh University, has stated several considerations aris- 

 ing from analogical reasoning, which appear to him to throw 

 the balance of evidence in favour of the primitive production 

 of infusoria, the vegetation called mould, and the like. One 

 seems to be of great force ; namely, that the animalcules, 

 which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to be produced 

 by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers, not 

 by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies. If it be 

 the nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting or 

 fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a 

 vegetable infusion ?( 51 ) It has been shown by the opponents 

 of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion is debarred 

 from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed 

 up or covered with a layer of oil, or only receives oxygen 

 which has passed through sulphuric acid, whereby all animal 

 admixtures have been destroyed, no animalcules are produced ; 

 but can we be sure, in such circumstances, that we have not 



