ITEAT UPON LIVING MATTER. 183 
from the formation of living organisms out of in- 
organic matter.” 
It seems obvious, however, that when Professor 
Wyman wrote this passage, he, forgetting for the 
time the more common acceptation of the phrase 
‘spontaneous generation, must have used it only in 
the sense in which I now employ the term Arche- 
biosis—in the sense, that is, of life-origination. But, 
even taking the phrase ‘spontaneous generation’ in 
this one sense only, how far, we may ask, was 
Professor Wyman justified in saying that its 
proof “must come from the formation of living 
organisms out of inorganic matter?” 
The statement is, in my opinion, one which cannot 
be logically entertained by a believer in the ordinary 
physical doctrines of life; and consequently, if Iam 
correct in this view, it should be professed by no 
consistent believer in Evolution. Those who do not 
assent to these physical doctrines of life would 
probably never be able to believe in Archebiosis at 
all—to the ‘vitalist, life is an immaterial principle 
specially created, and therefore our flask experiments 
terminating in the birth of new organisms, could at the 
most be regarded by him as proving the occurrence of 
Heterogenesis. Life was there, he might say, as an 
indestructible principle, so that the new organisms 
avhich appear are simply new embodiments of this 
