12 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
books and papers, has not hitherto succeeded in winning over any con- 
verts to his opinion. I am myself so entirely convinced of the accuracy 
of the results which Pasteur obtained—are they not within the daily and 
hourly experience of everyone who deals with the sterilisation of organic 
solutions ?—that I do not hesitate to believe, if living torulae or mycelia 
are exhibited to me in flasks which had been subjected to prolonged 
boiling after being hermetically sealed, that there has been some fallacy 
either in the premisses or in the carrying out of the operation. The 
appearance of organisms in such flasks would not furnish to my mind 
proof that they were the result of spontaneous generation. Assuming 
no fault in manipulation or fallacy in observation, I should find it simpler 
to believe that the germs of such organisms have resisted the effects 
of prolonged heat than that they became generated spontaneously. 
If spontaneous generation is possible, we cannot expect it to 
take the form of living beings which show so marked a degree of 
differentiation, both structural and functional, as the organisms which 
are described as making their appearance in these experimental flasks. !° 
Nor should we expect the spontaneous generation of living substance of 
any kind to occur in a fluid the organic constituents of which have been 
so altered by heat that they can retain no sort of chemical resemblance 
to the organic constituents of living matter. If the formation of life—of 
living substance—is possible at the present day—and for my own part 
I see no reason to doubt it—a boiled infusion of organic matter—and still 
less of inorganic matter—is the last place in which to look for it. Our 
mistrust of such evidence as has yet been brought forward need not, 
however, preclude us from admitting the possibility of the formation of 
living from non-living substance." 
Setting aside, as devoid of scientific foundation, the idea of immediate 
* It is fair to point out that Dr. Bastian suggests that the formation of 
ultramicroscopic living particles may precede the appearance of the microscopic 
organisms which he describes. The Origin of Life, 1911, p. 65. 
“The present position of the subject is succinctly stated by Dr. Chalmers 
Mitchell in his article on ‘ Abiogenesis’ in the Hncyclopeedia Britannica. Dr. 
Mitchell adds : ‘It may be that in the progress of science it may yet be possible 
to construct living protoplasm from non-living material. The refutation of 
abiogenesis has no further bearing on this possibility than to make it probable 
that if protoplasm ultimately be formed in the laboratory, it will be by a series 
of steps, the earlier steps being the formation of some substance, or substances, 
now unknown, which are not protoplasm. Such intermediate stages may have 
existed in the past.’ And Huxley in his Presidential Address at Liverpool in 
1870 says: ‘ But though I cannot express this conviction’ (i.e., of the impossi- 
bility of the occurrence of abiogenesis, as exemplified by the appearance of 
organisms in hermetically sealed and sterilised flasks) ‘too strongly, I must 
carefully guard myself against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no 
such thing as abiogenesis ever has taken place in the past or ever will take 
place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics and physiology 
yet in their infancy and every day making prodigious strides, I think it would 
be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which 
matter assumes the properties we call ‘‘ vital’’ may not, some day, be artificially 
brought together.’ 
