56 
REVIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS 
some of the sources mentioned are hatched by the electricity of the galvanic bat¬ 
tery. Every medical man knows, either from his reading or his practice, that 
minute living creatures have been found in the brain and other parts of the hu¬ 
man body, but the cause of their existence in such singular localities is perhaps 
not so easily explained. No one, however, would think of declaring to the 
world that these animalcules were created by the instrument of the anatomist. 
The assumption that Mr. Crosse’s experiments created living beings is less glaring 
to the unscientific, but nevertheless it is, in effect, equally a non sequitur. 
These cases, indeed, differ neither in kind nor in degree. Thus, whatever be 
the popular view of the case, in the eyes of the arithmetician it is equally erro¬ 
neous to say that 7 & 11 make 17 as to declare that the same numbers are equal 
to 12. 
We believe, with our author, that the vital principle is beyond “ human ken,” 
and that it will alone obey the will of Him in whom we c * live, and move, and 
have our being.” Many eminent men, however, have taken a different view of 
this point, and if their researches have led them conscientiously to believe what 
they advance, their opinions at least demand respect until we have the most 
positive and undoubted means of refuting them. The authors of the most im¬ 
portant discoveries have been accused of impiety, of fatalism, &c. &c., merely 
for advocating those great truths—those laws of Nature, and therefore of God— 
which in a few short years afterwards have been freely admitted and taught by 
every one possessing the smallest claims to the title of a scientific man. New 
theories, however true, are frequently so entirely opposed to our preconceived 
opinions, that they appear to us absurd in the extreme, and are at once, 
without the slightest rational ground for so doing, pronounced to be so, although 
the wisest among us are too frequently compelled to censure ourselves for hasty 
and unjust decisions. Let us then beware how we speak disrespectfully of those 
whose names are considered ornaments of science, and whose works will be 
cherished and revered by philanthropists as long as knowledge and improvement 
continue to be desirable. Let us pause ere we designate any one an atheist; and 
even supposing a man to declare his conscientious belief that there is no one 
ruling power, we are not to blame him, seeing that he cannot believe what he 
does not believe. 
We have been led to these observations by the strain in which the present 
pamphlet is written, and the occasional dogmatism of the author upon points in 
which, after all, he may be mistaken. The aim of his pages is to point out the 
impossibility of creating living creatures, and the probability of the insects pro¬ 
duced by Mr. Crosse’s experiments having been hatched by the electricity of the 
galvanic battery. The seeds of plants kept for hundreds and thousands of years 
have vegetated when sown, and the eggs of insects may, in like manner, have 
