1870.] with recent Experiments. 485 



task of creating living beings to the chapter of accidents and to the 

 blind physical forces of nature. My task is, however, not of such a 

 painful character. In the first place, it must be remembered that 

 if it should turn out that living beings are capable of springing into 

 existence through the direct transformation of decaying organic 

 matter, those beings are, so to speak, merely the instruments upon 

 which the higher psychical faculties play ; from dust they come and 

 to dust they return. And again, every advanced thinker is pre- 

 pared to admit that even the higher races which animate, beautify, 

 or transform the earth's surface, are fed, grow, and decay through 

 the direct operation of the physical forces, and that they are exqui- 

 sitely constructed machines, liable to injury, accident, and destruc- 

 tion, and need fuel and reparation just as any humanly-constructed 

 mechanism. What difference, then, can it make to any but the 

 most timid or bigoted thinkers whether the first appearance of the 

 lowest types of animal and plant life is due to the direct action of 

 the physical forces upon matter which has once been organized and 

 is undergoing decomposition, or to the same forces or some unknown 

 modification of them acting in the first instance in or upon almost 

 inconceivably minute pre-existing germs ? 



I can, however, offer to such timid philosophers the crumb of 

 comfort, that it is not unlikely the ultimate result of the discussion 

 which now agitates the scientific world will be to show that the 

 lowest known living types are not now created de novo, but that 

 their germs are almost omnipresent and ineradicable; and this 

 conclusion has been arrived at by me, not from the experiments 

 with varying and contradictory results which have been tried by 

 different investigators, but from a calm consideration of the whole 

 question, renewed at intervals, over a space of nearly fifteen years. 



And this reflection causes me to draw attention to a peculiar cir- 

 cumstance connected with the controversy on spontaneous genera- 

 tion ; namely, that we hardly ever hear of the work of any observer 

 extending over a lengthened period. In most cases we have a set 

 of experiments tried by an investigator of greater or less eminence 

 now a zoologist, then a chemist, which are published along with his 

 views, usually of a very decided and dogmatic character, and then he 

 rushes out of the arena, and we hear nothing more of him on that 

 subject. Of course he has settled the question to his own satisfac- 

 tion and to the satisfaction of those who agree with him, and there 

 is no need of further investigation until some new circumstance or 

 some fresh set of experiments invalidates all previous evidence and 

 raises up a new host of combatants and disciples on either side. 



We are at present in the very thick of such an intellectual con- 

 test, and no doubt there are many true believers in heterogenesis who 

 regard as conclusive the recently-published experiments and obser- 

 vations of Dr. Bastian which have startled the boldest thinkers and 



