48 Canadian Record of Science. 



gave eloquent utterance to his belief in the ancient 

 Lucretian philosophy, " that matter has in it the promise 

 and potency of all life." This was the main contention 

 of the well-known work, " Vestiges of Creation," which 

 had long before been issued anonymously, the authorship 

 of which was avowed by Eobert Chambers, of Edinburgh, 

 before his death. The alleged facts and arguments by 

 which the theory as to spontaneous generation was sup- 

 ported in that treatise had been thoroughly exploded. 

 But Professor Haeckel, of Germany, a well-known monist, 

 the most thorough going of Darwin's disciples, contends 

 for the position that all atoms are living. To combat this 

 theory was the task Professor Eucker, President of the 

 British Association, set himself at Glasgow, in September, 

 1901, which he was thought to perform successfully. For 

 many years the meetings of the British Association were 

 made the battle-ground around which the doctrines of 

 evolution were fought. I have mentioned its champions. 

 On the other side there were such stalwart men of science 

 as Lord Kelvin, Professor Virchow, Professor Clerk- 

 Maxwell, Professor Agassiz, Professor Clifford, Professor 

 Sidgwick, Sir George Stokes, the late Duke of Argyll, 

 and Sir William Dawson. 



Outside of scientific circles, the great mass of men, so 

 far as they apprehended the matter at all, remained 

 incredulous. They see that all life now proceeds from 

 foregoing life and takes the form substantially of that 

 from which it originated — like begetting its like. And as 

 to the fact that all life starts from protoplasm, they asked 

 how is it that one specimen of protoplasm tarries at 

 the stage of a structure of cellular tissue only, while 

 another goes on developing until finally a man is pro- 

 duced ? The reason of course is that each had a germ in 

 it of the old structure from which it got its start, into a 

 new specimen of which it afterwards developed. The 

 common sense of mankind asked, why should all these 



