86 THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 



recognize what is truly natural in the manner in 

 which Life passes away. Her garment of living 

 organization flows downward to the very lowest point 

 of contact with the inorganic ; by a kind of gliding 

 continuity earth is organized into the body of man, 

 and returns in like manner " earth to earth."* 



The reader is getting justly impatient of all this 

 verbiage. Let us come to the facts, and try to put 

 them in as few words as we can, consistently with 

 perfect fairness of statement. 



In a popular Encyclopaedia under the word " Bac- 

 teria," we shall find a very fair expression of what 

 may be called the popular view of what is now taken 

 as science by educated persons not specially students 

 of this science. 



"Bacteria are not only associated with 

 various fermentative changes in fluids, but 

 they also stand in a causal connection with 

 various diseases." 

 Such "proofs" as the following are cited: 



" Koch found that if a large quantity of 

 putrid material was introduced into animals 

 they died very quickly. . . . 



* Compare the following quotation, from Herschel's "Dis- 

 course on Natural Philosophy." " The travelling instances, as 

 well as what Bacon terms frontier instances, are cases in which we 

 are enabled to trace that general law which seems to pervade all 

 Nature, the law as it is termed of continuity, and which is expressed 

 in the well-known sentence, " Natura non agit per saltum." The 

 pursuit of this law into cases where its application is not at first 

 sight obvious, has proved a fertile source of physical discovery, 

 and led us to the knowledge of an analogy and intimate connec- 

 tion of phenomena, between which, at first sight, we should 

 never have expected to find any." 



