OPPOSITION. 1 59 



very real application to those men whose position was 

 to be estimated by work done after the year 1858. 



In the midst of those years of struggle and anxiety 

 which followed the appearance of the " Origin," we 

 meet with another instance of the same extraordinary 

 foresight which appeared in his contention in favour 

 of the persistence of the great oceans and continental 

 areas. I refer to his views on spontaneous generation 

 a very ancient belief, and one which from time to 

 time has been the will-o'-the-wisp of biological specu- 

 lation, leading it into all kinds of fruitless and 

 dangerous regions.* 



Dr. Carpenter's "Introduction to the Study of 

 Foraminifera " had been reviewed in the Athenceum 

 (March 28th, 1863), the writer attacking evolution 

 and favouring spontaneous generation, or, as it was 

 then called, heterogeny. Darwin wrote to Hooker, who 

 had lent him a copy of the paper, " Who would have 

 ever thought of the old stupid Athenoeum taking 

 to Oken-like transcendental philosophy written in 

 Owenian style ! . . . It will be some time before we 

 see ' slime, protoplasm, etc.,' generating a new animal. 

 ... It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the 

 origin of life ; one might as well think of the origin 

 of matter." In 1871 he wrote : 



" It is often said that all the conditions for the first pro- 

 duction of a living organism are now present, which could 

 ever have been present. But if (and oh ! what a big if !) we 

 could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of 



* Sec H. F. Osborn, " From the Greeks to Darwin" (1894). 



