SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

27

has been deposited. The question again comes up, Where, when, and whence did we get the first seed or living creature producing seed after its kind? When they show us this, I engage, if they do it while I am alive, to point out some nice adaptations in the production of this before unknown phenomenon.

I am aware that Dr. Bastian has, within the last year, laid before the Royal Society of London a set of experiments, which seem to yield a different result, and to prove that living beings may and do arise, as he expresses it, de novo.* Hitherto it has been believed that 100° Centigrade would destroy all organic germs. But he says he "has found organisms in organic fluids, either acid or alkaline, which, whilst enclosed within hermetically sealed and airless flasks, had been submitted not only to such a temperature, but even to one varying 146° C. and 153° C. for four hours." I find that Professor Huxley has no faith in the accuracy of these experiments. "I believe that the organisms which he has got out of his tubes are exactly those which he has put into them. I believe that he has used impure materials, and that what he imagines to have been the gradual development of life and organization in his solutions is the very simple result of the settling together of the solid impurities, which he was not sufficiently careful to see, in their scattered condition, when the solutions were made." But supposing these experiments to have been performed with unimpeachable

* See Nature, July, 1870.

accuracy, what has he established by them? Not that animated beings can be produced without seeds, but merely that certain seeds can bear exposure to a higher temperature than they have hitherto been supposed to be capable of standing. Professor Huxley says that "even if the results of the experiments are trustworthy, it by no means follows that there has been life without a germ. The resistance of living matter to heat is known to vary within considerable limits, and to depend to some extent upon the chemical and physical qualities of the surrounding medium. But if, in the present state of science, the alternative is offered us, either germs can stand a greater heat than has been supposed, or the molecules of dead matter, for no valid or intelligible reason that is assigned, are liable to rearrange themselves into living bodies, exactly such as can be demonstrated to be frequently produced in another way, I cannot understand how choice can be, even for a moment, doubtful." He sums up: "The evidence direct and indirect in favor of Biogenesis [that all life comes from life] must, I think, be admitted to be of great weight." statement so frankly, he thinks he may indulge in a speculation for which he admits he has no proof, and the reasoning involved in which is as illogical as Dr. Bastian's experiments are unscientific: "I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions, under which matter assumes the properties we call 'vital,' may not some day be artificially brought together. All that I feel

After making this

justified in affirming is, that I see no reason for believing that the feat has been performed yet." But then, "If it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than a man may recall his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter," he adds, "under forms of great simplicity." I suspect that he has an idea that his favorite protoplasm may be there, and gendering life there. "But I beg you to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion any thing but an act of philosophic faith." May it not be true of this faith, what Mr. Huxley would allow to be true of some religious faiths, that the wish is father to the thought, and that we are inclined to believe what we wish to be true? It may be that in some way, at present inexplicable, lower life did then appear; but over against this faith I set the one which I cherish, on the ground of the whole analogy of nature, that if that way could be explicated we should certainly find there, as we find everywhere, traces of a purpose. But I stand on firmer ground when I maintain that, when known facts are against us, it is utterly unscientific to appeal to what is and must ever be unknown.

We have now protoplasm as the food, and cells to feed upon them, and a germ cell: but we have not, after all, the organized plant or animal; we have not the rose, or the lily, or the oak; we have not even

the lichen or the zoöphyte. We have merely the stone and mortar necessary to the erection of the structure. In addition, there must needs be some music, like that which brought together the stones of ancient Thebes, to co-ordinate the materials of which the universe is composed; or, as more reasonable, there must be a builder, who is also an architect, so to arrange them that they may be turned into the form of the pine, the oak, the eagle, or the lion, or that goodly house in which we dwell, and which is "so fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Let us suppose that, by constant accretion of powers, we have now the plant: the question is started, How has this risen to the animal? "Notwithstanding," says Professor Huxley, "all the fundamental resemblances which exist between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and animals, they present a striking difference in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence in the long run depend on plants. Upon what conditions [that convenient word comes in once more] this difference in the powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing is at present known." Whether he knows it or not, there must be some cause, or, if he prefers, "condition," of the plant being turned into the animal.

And animals except, it may be, a few transitional forms at the base of the scale - have Sensation. Whence this sensation, so different from the

SENSATION.

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properties of matter, this sensation not found in unorganized matter, not even in the plant, and not manifested till the animal appears? Was it in the original matter, in the incandescent matter out of which our earth was formed? One trembles at the very thought; as, in such scorching heat, the animal must have been in a state of excruciating and intolerable anguish, we can conceive, seeking extinction, and incapable of finding it. And if the sensation came in at a later date, I ask, Whence? There is surely no power in nature capable of generating sensation out of particles of matter not themselves capable of sensation?

Since the immediately preceding thoughts were written, I find Professor Tyndall following somewhat the same train, in a paper read at the late meeting of the British Association, but avoiding the legitimate conclusion in a very illegitimate way. "The gist of our present inquiry regarding the introduction of life is this: Does it belong to what we call matter? or is it an independent principle inserted into matter at some suitable epoch, — say, when the physical conditions became such as to permit of the development of life?" There are the strongest grounds for believing that, during a certain period of its history, the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the theatre of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten period, does not much matter; and if we resort to the nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities are really on its side. Our question is this: Did