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torily proved; and, it is believed by those best enabled to form a correct 
opinion, will never be proved. The life produced by the experimenter 
is, no doubt, but a process of developing seeds or spores, or of hatching 
eggs, that exist invisibly in the atmosphere, and within the tube used in 
the experiment, and from which they had not been perfectly expelled. 
And well it is that life is not, and cannot be, spontaneous, for, if noxious, 
and no law of reproduction restrained the increase, there could then be 
no hope of its effectual extermination ; but, if depending upon parental 
production, when you destroy the parents, you destroy the pestiferous 
succession. This was the basis of the confidence of Pasteur in his suc- 
cessful researches and efforts to find out and destroy the parasite that 
destroyed the silk-worms in France. 
It is also the hope of mankind to escape contagious diseases, that pro- 
ceed from germs that ever re-produce the same disease, be it small-pox, 
scarlet fever, or cholera, or other plague, for the spread of which the cor- 
rupted air becomes the fitting propagating medium. 
If new generation were possible, there would result confusion ; it should 
be bound by no rule if not produced in the course of nature ; there could 
never then be scientific classification into genera and species, and all order 
and harmony would become impossible. It is a necessary ordination of 
the Author of nature that generation should come from a living parent- 
age, and that parents should ever produce their like. Such we know to 
be nature’s procedure. Such process must proceed by law, that the pro- 
geny shall be like their parents, and of different sexes, and such law and 
such sure observance of law, imply an intelligent Creator, who never 
ceases to watch over his creation. Life has been on the earth in countless 
forms, and in infinite multitudes, through nearly all the geological forma- 
tions from water deposition, and ever since; but none of that life has 
been thought to be spontaneous, except in the imagination of the poet, or 
of the fanciful theorist. All except the first of each kind, for which we 
infer a Creator, came by generation, from parental germs and ova, as we 
must believe from observation; or by fission, which but subdivides life 
and thereby multiplies it. It is, however, now announced in this age of 
great discoveries that man can produce life where no life was. 
Dr. Bastian has made numerous experiments and written a book on 
‘‘The Modes of Origin of Lowest Organisms,’’ and believes that he has 
produced them de novo, ‘‘independently of pre-existing living matter.”’ 
But his book makes necessary admissions that must go far, if not quite, 
to destroy his theory. All the living organisms which he produced had 
been before known as existing in the course of nature, and had been 
named, They are called Bacteria, Torule, Vibrones, Leptothria. But 
why were these, and but these, produced, unless they had a parentage 
through germs containing life? Why not something new? Certainly 
these were not new creations of life, but something re-produced that had 
before their given law; and it is easier for the scientific mind to believe 
that the parental germs had not been removed by the experimenter, than 
that he had witnessed a new production of life. This view is well con- 
SEE ea oc oe 
