VIII BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS 231 



life were generated in the matters in which they 

 made their appearance. Lucretius, who had drunk 

 deeper of the scientific spirit than any poet of 

 ancient or modern times except Goethe, intends to 

 speak as a philosopher, rather than as a poet, when 

 he writes that "with good reason the earth has 

 gotten the name of mother, since all things are 

 produced out of the earth. And many living 

 creatures, even now, spring out of the earth, taking 

 form by the rains and the heat of the sun." l The 

 axiom of ancient science, " that 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 sowest is not 

 quickened, except it die." 2 



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 



1 It is thus that Mr. Munro renders 



" Linquitiir, ut merito maternum nomen adepta 

 Terra sit, e terra quoniam sunt cuncta creata. 

 Multaque mine etiam exsistant animalia terris 

 Imbribus et calido solis concreta vapore. " 



De Rerum Natura, lib. v. 793796. 



But would not the meaning of the last line be better 

 rendered " Developed in rain-water and in the warm vapours 

 raised by the sun " ? * \ Corinthians xv. 36. 



