258 HERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOGONY. 



chemical combination. No doubt, to objections that 

 the living matter must surely be different from albu- 

 men, Hackel will reply, with Huxley of course it is ! 

 and will quote passages where he calls it albumenoid, 

 or albumen-like, or, as in the passage here given at p. 

 247, attributes to the plastids an infinite variety of 

 atomic constitution. But the passages I have quoted 

 above are nevertheless ambiguous and certain to mis- 

 lead others, and, I maintain, show a confusion in the 

 mind of the author himself, which must affect all 

 materialists who do not follow Fletcher's theory of the 

 metabolic state (see p. 182). Finally, however, Hackel 

 is compelled to admit that "Autogony (and also plasma- 

 gony the other form of Archigony) remains a pure 

 hypothesis, because we take for granted a natural pro- 

 cess, the transition of lifeless matter into living matter, 

 which has never yet received an empirical foundation 

 by trustworthy observation" (" Gen. Morph.," ii. 292). 

 I do not know what Mr. Herbert Spencer's religious 

 opinions are, but he, like Hackel, is a follower of Oken 

 and Lamark in believing in the evolution of living 

 from inorganic matter by natural processes. That is 

 to say, while he brushes away with a kind of scorn 

 what is usually called spontaneous generation, viz., 

 the evolution of " creatures having quite specific 

 structures in a few hours without antecedents calcu- 

 lated to determine their specific forms," in fermenting 

 and putrefying fluids : yet he holds that the process 

 did take place in the primeval world, and might 

 possibly even now take place just as Hackel describes 

 above, by gradual steps. There never was a " first 

 organism/' but a gradual formation of more and more 



