

SPECIES. Ill 



egg and the hen, we raise, as with a lever, the great and dark 

 question of the generation of the world."* 



That the animals which we know all reproduce by eggs, is 

 possible, although it has not been proved, but this is not an 

 important point ; we want to know if all the animals which we 

 are able to observe do not remount necessarily, in a more or 

 less direct manner, and at a more or less distant period, to a 

 spontaneous beginning, j- The difficulty is everywhere the 

 same, everywhere we arrive at that immense obscurity which 

 envelopes the origin of life on the surface of our planet ; but 

 it is essential in every case not to give to the phenomenon of 

 spontaneous beginning any other signification than it ought to 

 have. We must not believe, for instance, that matter is formed 

 by the agglomeration of parts which do not yet live in a per- 

 fect being, having already all its organs distributed and pro- 

 portionate, uniting in one living whole. This would be to 

 cast ourselves on the field of an absolutely improbable hypo- 

 thesis. Histology teaches us that each animal, its instincts 

 and intellect included, is at a given moment merely a mass of 

 amorphous matter, which, at a later period, will form itself, 

 or in the midst of which will be spontaneously developed an 

 anatomical element, that is to say, an organised body. To 

 admit spontaneous genesis, then, is simply to admit the formation 

 of organic amorphous primitive matter apart from an already 

 living body, at the cost of and in the heart of which can be 

 born the initial anatomical element of one of these animals, 

 very properly called protozoa. We can even ask, whether this 

 latent primary life, this atomic life, has not always been the 

 ruling life on our planet. J And since, when account is taken 



* "Ac Sylla quidern. sodalis noster, fatus nos parva qusestione tanquam 

 instrumento ingentem et gravem de origine mundi qusestionem subruere." 

 Qucestionem Convivalium, book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841. 



f Buffon said that (Supplements, vol. iv, p. 335) this method of generation 

 is not only the most frequent and the most general, but the most ancient, 

 that is, the first and most universal one. Plutarch (Qucest. Conviv., book ii, 

 quest. 3 ; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841) makes the same remark : " Pro- 

 inde probabile est primum ortum ex terra gignentis perfectione ac robore 

 absolutum fuisse, nihilque indigentem hujusmodi instrumentis, receptaculis 

 et vasis, qualia nunc ob imbecillitatem natura parit atque machinatur pari- 

 entibus." 



J It must not be forgotten, that organic substances are supposed to have 

 been found even in the formation of certain aerolites. 



