ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



SPONTANEOUS VITALITY OF MICROSCOPIC ANIMALS. 



Hence without parent by spontaneous birth 



Rise the first specks of animated earth. CANTO I. 1. 227. 



Prejudices against this doctrine, 



I. FROM the misconception of the ignorant or superstitious, it has 

 been thought somewhat profane to speak in favour of spontaneous 

 vital production, as if it contradicted holy writ; which says, that God 

 created animals and vegetables. They do not recollect that God 

 created all things which exist, and that these have been from the be- 

 ginning in a perpetual state of improvement; Avhich appears from the 

 globe itself, as well as from the animals and vegetables, which possess 

 it. And lastly, that there is more dignity in our idea of the supreme 

 author of all things, when we conceive him to be the cause of causes, 

 than the cause simply of the events, which we see; if there can be 

 any difference in infinity of power ! 



Another prejudice which has prevailed against the spontaneous 

 production of vitality, seems to have arisen from the misrepresenta- 

 tion of this doctrine, as if the larger animals had been thus produced; 

 as Ovid supposes after the deluge of Deucalion, that lions were seen 

 rising out of the mud of the Nile, and struggling to disentangle their 

 hinder parts. It was not considered, that animals and vegetables 

 have been perpetually improving by reproduction; and that sponta- 

 neous vitality was only to be looked for in the simplest organic beings, 

 as in the smallest microscopic animalcules; which perpetually, perhaps 

 hourly, enlarge themselves by reproduction, like the roots of tulips 

 from seed, or the buds of seedling trees, which die annually, leaving 

 others by solitary reproduction rather more perfect than themselves 



B 



