ii6 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE^ 



confess my own utter inability to understand what 

 reasons can be adduced in support of so contradictory a 

 doctrine. Reason alone might lead to its rejection 

 even if careful and repeated experiments had 

 shown it to be erroneous. 



not 



No 



because this is a statical aggregate which undergoes no 

 continuous series of molecular actions. Its constituent 

 units always tend to fall into a condition of polar 

 equilibrium ; and when occasional changes occur^ they 

 are always due to extrinsic agencies. Reproductive 



elements 



are^ however^ frequently and of 



necessity 



thrown ofF from the organism, because its polarities are 

 often too complex to admit of an equilibrium being 

 established: a current and continuous molecular re- 

 arrangement goes on, as a result of which, when an 

 approximate equilibrium is otherwise impossible, certain 

 portions of its constituent matter tend to aggregate 

 round new centres, which become independent and 

 ultimately by a continuance of the same action separate 

 from the parent organism — as ' conidia ' or ' spores.' 



These views, which flow as a necessary consequence 

 from the doctrines of evolution, have now, by the results 

 of the experiments detailed in previous chapters, re- 

 ceived the only warrant which was needed. Having 

 learned that new living matter can originate de novo 

 after the same fashion as new crystalline matter^ the 

 only doctrine which at present seems open to us is 

 that which has just been explained. The forms and 



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