THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE, 



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21 2° F. And whilst these differences t^nd strongly to 

 confirm the truth of the mode of explanation which 

 I have suggested of the discrepancies observed by 

 M. Pasteur when he repeated Schwann^s experiments 

 with acid and alkaline organic infusions respectively^ 



strengthen the 



pro- 



they may also be considered to 

 babilities in favour of my assumption that an acid 

 fluid is less prone to undergo those molecular changes 

 which lead to the evolution of living things, than 

 a fluid, otherwise similar, whose reaction is neutral 

 or faintly alkaline. And yet, this explanation was 

 utterly ignored by M. Pasteur ; he leads his readers to 

 believe that the before-mentioned discrepancies were 

 explicable only in one way; and he moreover illogically 

 attempted to set aside a rule, concerning the limits of 

 ^ vital resistance^ to different degrees of heat, to which 

 he had previously assented, on the strength of evidence 

 which was most ambiguous and inconclusive. 



One finds M. Pasteur, as a chemist, engaging him- 

 self in a controversy concerning one of the most im- 



portant questions in the whole range of biological 

 science; and yet he assumes the attitude of a man 

 who is so convinced beforehand of the error of those 

 who are of the opposite opinion, that he will not abide 

 by ordinary rules of fairness; he will not even, at first^ 

 assume the possibility of the truth of the opinions which 

 are opposed to his own. Ambiguous evidence is ex- 

 plained as though it were not ambiguous ; conclusions 

 based upon good evidence are attempted to be set aside 



