THE ORIGIN OP LIFE 



from what they are now; but we are very far from 

 having a clear idea of what they were, or from being able 

 to reproduce them artificially. We are just as far from 

 having a thorough chemical acquaintance with the al- 

 buminous compounds to which plasm belongs. We can 

 only assume that the plasma - molecule is extremely 

 large, and made up of more than a thousand atoms, and 

 that the arrangement and connection of the atoms in 

 the molecule are very complicated and unstable. But 

 of the real features of this intricate structure we have 

 as yet no conception. As long as we are ignorant of 

 this complex molecular structure of albumin, if is use- 

 less to attempt to produce it artificially. Yet in this 

 position of the matter we would seek to produce that 

 great wonder of life, the plasm, artificially, and when the 

 experiment miscarries (as we should expect) we cry out: 

 "Spontaneous generation is impossible." 



When we carefully consider the intelligent experiments 

 that have been made in regard to archigony in the light 

 of these facts, it is clear that their negative result does 

 not in the slightest degree affect our question. The 

 much-admired experiments of Pasteur and his colleagues 

 prove merely that in certain artificial conditions infusoria 

 are not formed in decomposing organic compounds (or 

 the dead tissues of highly organized histona) ; they can- 

 not possibly prove that saprobioses of this kind do not 

 take place under other conditions. They tell us noth- 

 ing whatever about the possibility or reality of archig- 

 ony; in the form in which I put the scientific hypoth- 

 esis in 1866 it is completely untouched by all these 

 experiments. It remains intact as the first attempt to 

 give a provisional reply — if only in the form of a tem- 

 porary hypothesis — on the basis of modern science to 

 one of the chief questions of natural philosophy. 



In my General Morphology (1866), and afterwards in 

 my Biological Studies on the Monera and other Protists, 

 '3 353 



