144 CONCERNING PRESENT 



believer in Evolution could ever suppose that it had to do with the 

 origination of any but " the lowest and simplest " organic forms. 



When it is said that a belief in ' Spontaneous Generation' (Arche- 

 biosis) would tend to contradict the experience of all mankind, as 

 we are accustomed to see living things invariably proceed or take 

 their origin from other living things, my reply is that Archebiosis 

 may be occurring all round us, and that from its very nature it must 

 be a process lying altogether outside human experience — and never 

 likely to come within the actual ken of man. So that even if it had 

 been given to Prof. Huxley, as he said ' in a celebrated Presidential 

 Address, to " look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time " 

 it would have been excessively unlikely that he would have been 

 enabled to witness, as he intimated, an " Evolution of living proto- 

 plasm from not-living matter." At the most he might have seen 

 then (but only if equipped with a powerful microscope) just what 

 he might have seen in his own day under more favourable con- 

 ditions, namely, a gradual emergence into the sphere of the visible, 

 in some suitable fluid, of the minutest specks of living protoplasm. 



It is scarcely conceivable for an Evolutionist to suppose that 

 living matter could ever take origin, either now or in the past, in 

 any other way. So that the birth of ultra-microscopical particles 

 gradually coming into the region of the visible may easily be 

 understood as a process, in its incipient stages, lying altogether 

 outside the range of man's experience, and as one which, even in 

 its later stages, has been seen only by a few who have specially 

 looked for it. 



In Chap. Ill (pp. 50-54) I have told all that can be seen of what 

 appears to be the origin of particles of living matter — the possible 

 process of Archebiosis — and have made known an easy means by 

 which others may, if they proceed with care, observe for themselves 

 this gradual emergence of living particles from the region of the 

 invisible. They do not proceed from any germs which are known 

 to science. Science knows only visible germs. Moreover, I have 

 shown that the very minute particles which appear, speedily grow 

 into Bacteria or into Torulae of one or other kind ; and that these 

 forms of life are just as plastic and modifiable as we should expect 

 them to be if they had in fact been derived from new-born particles 

 of living matter — this being a substance which, as we have seen, 

 by reason of its extreme molecular complexity, has a high intrinsic 

 tendency to variation. 



" Report of the Brit. Assocn. for the Advancement of Science, 1870. 



