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dependent for their propagation upon what we can only look 
upon as genetic products. 
Manifestly, then, it must be weighty — nay, unequivocal and 
even irresistible — evidence that will induce the philosophical 
Biologist to conclude that nature’s otherwise universal method 
is changed, in the outmost fringe of organised being. Mere 
reasoning could never accomplish this. It must be hard, 
defiant fact, which none can gainsay. But verily no such 
facts — nor even their most distant forecasts — are before us. 
The profound difficulties which bristle round the enquiry on 
every hand are prominent signals for caution ; while the un- 
certainty and incompetency of the methods hitherto employed, 
and their conflict of results, is alive with meaning. Indeed, we 
are dealing with organisms so minute as to elude all but our 
best optical appliances ; and the accurate and correct interpre- 
tation of the details they enable us to discover requires the 
practice and experience of years. Of the developmental history 
of these organisms themselves, we know from actual obser- 
vation almost nothing with certainty ; and the little we do know 
from such careful and patient observers as Cohn, Billroth, Bay, 
Lankester and others, is so complex and conflicting as to 
demonstrate the necessity of years of patient experiment and 
skilled research ; and to plainly tell us of our ignorance of 
this minute and wonderful group of organic forms. And yet, 
forsooth, we are asked, upon the conflicting testimony of a 
multiplicity of boiled infusions, yielding often even in the same 
hands uncertain results, and in different hands conflicting ones, 
to believe that organic nature — whose method of reproduction 
is the same to the very limits of certain knowledge — changes: 
its method in this uncertain and cloudy region. 
Of course to “ spontaneous generation ” as a mode of vital 
reproduction there can be no a 'priori objection. Let us have 
it by all means, if it be a fact in nature ; but not on any 
other terms. Is it reasonable to suppose that such men as 
Darwin, and Huxley, and Tyndall, and Burdon Sanderson, and 
Cohn, and Billroth, and Lankester, would shrink from “ spon- 
taneous generation ” because of the “ consequences ” to which, 
strangely enough, it is by some supposed to lead ? The very 
thought admits of nothing but ridicule. And yet Dr. Bastian 
is displeased with Darwin * because he has not definitely deter- 
mined whether all living things originated in one primordial 
germ, or originated spontaneously in multitudinous centres 
scattered over the earth’s surface. Both Huxley and Tyndall 
are in effect charged with grave inconsistency, f because, 
while they admit the origin of all vital forms by evolution, they 
11 Evolution and the Origin of Life,” pp. 13-17. t Ibid. pp. 15-16. 
