10 LIFE: ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 
said that, cosmically speaking, life is a mere 
“flash in the pan,” between two eternities, yet 
for us it is this “flash in the pan” which is 
everything. 
The question of the origin of life upon our 
planet is naturally of great interest, and is one 
which has been discussed at greater length than 
almost any other scientific problem. Various 
theories have been advanced in the past, rang¬ 
ing from the purely theological conception that 
life was imparted directly by some external 
Deity, as a special “act of creation,” to the 
materialistic view that life must somehow have 
come into being as the result of some process 
of spontaneous generation. A few of these 
theories I shall endeavor to summarize very 
briefly. 
The theory of spontaneous generation has not 
as yet received scientific support, and no proof 
exists that it ever occurs under the present cir¬ 
cumstances. Until the time of Pasteur, it was 
generally believed that it was more or less a 
common phenomenon, but Pasteur proved that 
the experiments which had been conducted in 
the past were inconclusive, and that no scienti¬ 
fic evidence existed tending to show that spon¬ 
taneous generation ever exists, as a matter of 
fact. Doctor Charlton Bastian, of England, con¬ 
ducted a number of experiments in an endeavor 
to prove that spontaneous generation could be 
brought about experimentally in the laboratory, 
and published a number of books, endeavoring 
to demonstrate this. Among these may be men¬ 
tioned “The Beginnings of Life,” in two 
volumes; “The Origin of the Lowest Organ- 
