APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 83 



misleading; instinct, lay eggs out of which maggots 

 are immediately hatched, upon the gauze. The 

 conclusion, therefore, is unavoidable ; the maggots 

 are not generated by the meat, but the eggs which 

 give rise to them are brought through the air by the 

 flies. 



These experiments seem almost childishly simple, 

 and one wonders how it was that no one ever thought 

 of them before. Simple as they are, however, they are 

 worthy of the most careful study, for every piece of ex- 

 perimental v/ork since done, in regard to this subject, 

 has been shaped upon the i.iodel furnished by the 

 Italian philosopher. As the results of his experi- 

 ments were the same, however varied the nature of 

 the materials he used, it is not wonderful that there 

 arose in Redi's mind a presumption that, in all such 

 cases of the seeming production of life from dead 

 matter, the real explanation was the introduction 

 of living germs from without into that dead matter. 

 And thus the hypothesis that living matter always 

 arises by the agency of pre-existing living matter, 

 took definite shape ; and had, henceforward, a right 

 to be considered and a claim to be refuted, in each 

 particular case, before the production of living 

 matter in any other way could be admitted by care- 

 ful reasoners. It will be necessary for me to refer to 

 this hypothesis so frequently, that, to save circum- 

 locution, I shall call it the hypothesis of Biogenesis ; 

 and I shall term the contrary doctrine— that living 

 matter may be produced by not living matter — the 

 hypothesis of Abiogeiiesis. 



In the seventeenth century, as I have said, the 

 latter was the dominant view, sanctioned alike by 

 antiquity and by authority ; and it is interesting to 

 observe that Redi did not escape the customary tax 

 upon a discoverer of having to defend himself against 

 the charge of impugning the authority of the Scrip- 

 tures ; for his adversaries declared that the generation 

 of bees from the carcase of a dead lion is affirmed, 

 in the Book of Judges, to have been the origin of 



