SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 205 



Dr. Bastian. His results are most remarkable, and 

 deserve to be studied with the greatest care. As a 

 veteran and experienced worker, and a thinker, too, 

 he commands that consideration which is his due, 

 whatever our opinions may be as to the inferences 

 which he has drawn from his observations, or even 

 as to the precise nature of those observations 

 themselves. They are, as most people would admit, 

 most careful and most detailed descriptions of what 

 he has himself observed, and though difficult to 

 account for, our preconceived notions must give 

 way if the logic of his facts can supplant them. 

 There remains much room for the discussion of his 

 observations before the doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation can be accepted as a fact. As we 

 have said, the line of argument as well as 

 the method of experiment we have ventured to 

 pursue are quite different, and our experiments 

 have not led us to suppose that life de novo 

 is a phenomenon which it is our privilege to 

 see to-day. Those forms we have obtained cannot 

 be identified with any types of living things 

 we see around us, using the word life for that 

 phenomenon of metabolic change in protoplasm 

 which can give rise to assimilation, growth, perfect 

 reproduction and decay. But if the word life be 

 extended, as we have tried to extend it, to the 

 phenomena of metabolism generally ; and if it is 

 admitted that in those forms, those purely artificial 

 forms, which we have obtained in the laboratory, 

 and which in a similar manner can perform, in the 



