140 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



man among the animals " une verit humiliante 

 pour Fhomme " Buff on could not close his eyes to 

 the evidence pointing towards such relationships, and 

 ventured the remark, which he was afterwards obliged 

 to withdraw, that had it not been for the express 

 statements of the Bible, one might be tempted to 

 seek a common origin for the horse and the ass, the 

 man and the monkey. 



Both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, 



men firmly believed that living things might arise 



Spontaneous de novo from dead matter. "From Aris- 



Generation. totle to Augustine, from Lucretius to 

 Luther, the belief in spontaneous generation remained 

 unshaken." Frogs might be generated from mud by 

 sunshine, and perhaps the aboriginal Americans, whose 

 descent from Adam was difficult to trace, might have 

 the same origin. But Francesco Redi (1626-1697) 

 showed that, if the flesh of a dead animal be protected 

 from insects, no grubs or maggots appeared in it. 



Redi's experiments were considered to controvert 

 the Scriptures, and were attacked on that ground ; an 

 interesting fact in the light of its reversal in recent years, 

 when an unsuccessful attempt to prove spontaneous 

 generation was prematurely reprobated as going to show 

 that life might arise without direct creation. It seems 

 as though the theological mind when ill-regulated hates 

 a novelty for its own sake. But it is refreshing to 

 find that Redi's work was upheld and extended by 

 the Abbe Spallanzani (1729-1799), who showed that 

 even minute forms of life did not develop in decoctions 

 which had been boiled vigorously and then protected 

 from the air. 



