THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
269 
has got out of his tubes are exactly those he has put into them ; 
that I believe he has used impure materials, and that what he 
imagines to have been the gradual development of Life and 
organization in his solution is the very simple result of the 
settling together of the said impurities Avhich he was not 
sufficiently careful to see, in their scattered condition, when the 
solutions were made. He will recollect that he wrote to me 
asking permission to bring for my examination certain preparations 
of organic structures, which he declared he had clear and positive 
evidence to prove to have been developed in the closed digested 
tubes. Dr. B will remember that when the first of these 
wonderful specimens was put under my microscope I told him 
that it was nothing but the fragment of the leaf of the common 
bog moss (Sphagnum) ; and he will recollect that I had to fetch 
Schacht's book (Die Pflanzenzelle), and show him a figure which 
fitted very well what he had under the microscope, before I could 
get him to listen to my suggestion." 8 
If then, on such great authority, Spontaneous Generation must 
be set aside, the question naturally arises, How does such a result 
affect the position that Life, in the first instance, sprang from the 
pre-existing inorganic matter 1 ? It is noticeable that Haeckel is 
especially sensitive on this point. He says, " If we do not accept 
the hypothesis of Spontaneous Generation, then, at this one point 
of the history of development (i.e., when life first appeared), we 
must have recourse to the miracle of a supernatural creation." 9 
It is only right to say that this despair on the part of Haeckel is 
not shared by others who are as rigid as he is in the application 
of the principle of Continuity ; and he himself, with queer incon- 
sistency, in another part of the same work, refers to the probable 
difference in the condition of Carbon and the state of the atmo- 
sphere in the remote past, as accounting for the evolution of life 
from inorganic matter then and not now. 1 Mr. Spencer is perfectly 
consistent in the view he takes while rejecting Spontaneous Gener- 
ation as unscientific. He takes pains to show that there was, in 
his judgment, an almost interminable interaction among the 
primitive molecules before even compounds called organic were 
formed; and that ages of subtle interaction and evolution were 
8 Nature, October 30th, 1870. Cf. Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 400-403. 
9 History of Creation, i. p. 348. 
1 Ibid. i. pp. 330-336. 
