A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



" To the solid ground 

 Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye." — Wordsworth. 



THURSDAY, MAY 2, 1907. 



THE ENIGMA OF LIFE. 



(i) The Evolution of Life. By Dr. H. Charlton 

 Bastian, F.R.S. Pp. xviii + 319; with diagrams 

 and many photomicrographs. (London : Methuen 

 and Co., n.d.) Price 7^. 6d. net. 



(2) The Nature and Origin of Life in the Light of 

 New Knowledge. By Prof. Felix Le Dantec. An 

 introductory preface by Robert K. Duncan, author 

 of "The New Knowledge." Pp. xvi + 250; 21 

 figures. (London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1907.) 

 Price 6s. net. 



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conviction that living organisms continue 

 to arise from not-living material. It is a long time 

 since, in his " Beginnings of Life " (1872), Bastian 

 sought to establish the reality of this " archebiosis " 

 and also of heterogenesis — that strange process by 

 which organisms or parts of organisms of definite 

 kind give rise to organisms of a quite different kind, 

 as when the ovum of the rotifer Hydatina produces 

 the infusorian Otostoma. In 1S76-7 there was a 

 notable and useful controversy between Bastian, on 

 the one side, Tyndall and Pasteur on the other, the 

 issue of which seemed to most experts to be that 

 Bastian failed to make good his case for the present- 

 day occurrence of spontaneous generation. The 

 claims of professional work forced the heretic to 

 renounce his investigations for about twenty years, 

 but he has recently been able to return with unabated 

 vigour to the study of both heterogenesis and abio- 

 genesis. His " Studies in Heterogenesis " and his 

 work on "The Nature and Origin of Living Matter " 

 have been already reviewed in Nature, and we have 

 now before us an account of his recent researches 

 on " archebiosis " and a clear exposition of his views 

 as to "The Evolution of Life." It is impossible not 

 to admire the author's strong desire to get at the 

 truth, the courage of his convictions, and his in- 

 comparable good humour. 



Dr. Bastian begins by indicating some of the 

 NO. 1957. VOL. 76] 



objections to the term " spontaneous generation," 

 which is almost as bad as " generatio equivoca"; 

 he advocates the use of the word " archebiosis "— 

 the past or present origination of living things from 

 not-living material — and he contrasts it with " hetero- 

 genetic reproduction," which presupposes pre-exist- 

 ing organisms. In the first part of his book he 

 points out that inorganic evolution (recently studied 

 in ways not a little upsetting) has not stopped, and 

 argues against the dogmatism of those who, while 

 admitting that archebiosis probably occurred very 

 long ago, refuse to discuss the possibility of its occur- 

 rence now. Because it has been shown that maggots 

 are not really produced by the flesh in which they 

 crawl, it does not follow that minute specks of living 

 matter may not arise de novo in suitable not-living 

 fluids, and to base the formula omne vivum ex vivo 

 on the " past experience of mankind " is ridiculously 

 naive. It has become the fashion to call " spon- 

 taneous generation" a "chimera," and the study 

 of it a search for a mare's nest. But " neither 

 Darwin, Huxley, nor Spencer ever undertook any 

 experimental work on this subject themselves," and 

 as for Tyndall and Pasteur, both were convinced 

 beforehand. The whole story is gone over again 

 (pp. 95-22S), and it is (psychologically, at least) very 

 instructive. Since 1S78, Dr. Bastian had not, before 

 the present work, published anything on the subject 

 of archebiosis, save one chapter in his 1905 volume, 

 and it is interesting to read his retrospect of a famous 

 controversy and his undismayed conclusions in spite 

 of all. 



"Mere observation," the author points out, "can 

 never settle the question whether Archebiosis does or 

 does not take place at the present day." In a fluid 

 believed to be quite not-living, minute living 

 creatures appear, but observation cannot decide 

 whether they arise from invisible germs of pre- 

 existing organisms, or " whether they have come into 

 being in the mother liquid as a result of life-giving 

 synthetic processes." Therefore we must resort to 

 experiment, and the fallacies to be guarded against 

 are two. The heat employed in the sterilising process 

 must be adequate to kill all pre-existing living things 



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