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§ 428. Nomogeny or Thaumatogeny ? 2-The French Academy of Sciences was the field of discussion and debate, from 1861 to 1864, between the Evolutionists' holding the doctrine of primary life by miracle, and the Epigenesists' who try to show that the phenomena are due to the operation of existing law, The analogy of the discussion between Pasteur and Pouchet, and that between Cuvier and Geoffroy, is curiously close. Besides the superiority in fact and argument, Pasteur, like Cuvier, had the advantage of subserving the prepossessions of the party of order' and the needs of theology. The justice of Jamin's summary, awarding to the chemist the palm of superior care and skill both in devising and performing the experiments, and exposing the inferiority of the physiologist in polemical ability and coolness of argumentation, cannot be denied. Nevertheless, Pouchet, is rapidly acquiring, in reference to the origin of monads, that position which Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has taken in regard to the origin of species. It is a suggestive and instructive fact in the philosophy of mind and the history of progress.

Some rare instances, in every generation, are gifted with the faculty of discerning the light of truth through all obstruction: when its glimmer is of the feeblest their brain responsively vibrates through a barrier of beliefs, prepossessions, precise logic, across thickets of facts deemed to be rightly understood, athwart accepted laws' and principles, organised corps of the soldiers of science, public opinion, &c.; and these men never know when they are beaten and put out of court: happily, against all hindrance, they persist-'e pur si muove.'

Pasteur by an ingeniously devised apparatus, collected atoms in the atmosphere, and described and figured them as examples of organised corpuscles,'' globules,' or the 'germs' of living things, there floating. In a solution of organic matter, otherwise unfit for the development of life, the addition of some of these germs was followed by the appearance, in abundance, of its simple forms.

To the conclusion that the monads were the consequence, not merely the sequence, of the ensemencement,' it can be objected that the atmospheric atoms figured are not like the observed formified corpuscles by which bacteriums have been seen to be 1 vóμos, law, yévw, root of yiyvoμai, to 'become,' or come into being.

2 θαῦμα, miracle, γένω.

3 cccxxxiv. pp. 442, 443. 4 cccrx". p. 25, Pl. I. fig. 1. 5 Ib. Pl. I. figs. 2-9. Ib. "quelques corpuscles organisées."-p. 28, Pl. I. figs. 2, 3, 4:-"tout-à-fait semblables à des germes d'organismes inférieures."-p. 37. Of the various wellmarked forms of ova or germs of lower organisms, I know not any recognisable in the figures above cited.

built up; and, that the chemical treatment to which they had been subject, in their extraction from the atmosphere, would be likely to destroy the vitality of fecund germs, if any were present. To the alleged absence of any organisms in the experiments which were calculated to exclude extraneous germs, and to unfit the infusion for the development of any it might contain, the graver objection applies, that the microscopic power employed by Pasteur in their search was insufficient. Dr. Child,' in experiments which seem to be as exclusive as Pasteur's, does obtain bacteriums, discoverable, at first, by a power of 1,500 diameters, and, once so seen, afterwards recognisable by a power of 750 diameters: whereas Pasteur, in his quest, did not avail himself of a power exceeding 350 diameters, and consequently failed to detect the evidence of nomogeny,' under conditions as decisive as can be hoped in an attempt to prove a negative. Against 'panspermism,' or the dogma that animalcules of infusions come, invariably and exclusively, from pre-existing germs falling from the air, Pouchet records the results of experiments, conclusive or satisfactory from their simplicity and ease of repetition, and freedom from need of minute, ambiguous, manipulatory precautions.2

A glass tube containing a filtered infusion is placed in the middle of a glass dish containing the same infusion: this stands in a wider dish of water in which a bell-glass is placed covering the vessels with the infusion. At the end of four or five days the tube-infusion has a thick film abounding with ciliate infusoria: the dish-infusion has a thin reticulate film containing only bacteriums and other small non-ciliate 'microzoaires.' It is 'difficult to see how the germs of the one kind of creatures should have entered or become developed in the one vessel and entirely different kinds in the other.' 3

I refer the reader to CCCXII". and cccxxxv". for further analysis of the grounds of the disputants, and proceed to remark, that the illustrations of the process of development of a Paramecium1 so closely resemble those of the ovarian ovum in Fish or Mammal, that either fig. 555 or fig. 416, vol. i. of the pre

cccxi". p. 101: paraphrasing Pouchet :- Si les œufs tombaient de l'atmosphère, comme le prétendent les panspermistes, il n'y aurait pas de raison au monde qui pût faire que, dans la même portion d'air, l'éprouvette en soit constamment remplie et la cuvette jamais. Celle-ci même, à cause de sa surface bien autrement étendue, devrait en récolter infiniment plus.'-cccx". p. 136.

cccx". Pl. II. figs. 1-5, and cccxr". Pl. I. fig. 1.

sent work serves as well as those given by Pouchet, to exemplify it. The proligerous pellicle, due to the resolution into molecules of the primarily formified bacteriums and vibrios of infusions, answers to the molecular contents of the ovisac. In both instances the molecules or granules aggregate into groups forming spheroids more opake than the rest (as in fig. 555, A): as the aggregation and coalescence advances the sphere becomes more opake, more definite: then a clear line marks its inclusion within a membrane, analogous to a'zona pellucida,' and proclaims its individualisation (as in ib. B). Next appears a clear nucleus, answering to the germinal vesicle (as in ib. c). Fission of the nucleus is followed by that of the monad, which may thus multiply itself within the primary envelope (Chlamydomonas, CCXLIX. fig. 29), like the cleavage-formation of the germ-mass: ciliary organs are acquired in both instances, rotating the germ-mass in the mammalian ovum, and extricating the monad from its proligerous bed; whereupon it revolves or darts along, a free animalcule, in the subjacent liquor of the infusion.

In neither instance is there any support, from observation, of the derivation of germ-mass or of monad by evolution out of a preexisting cell: in both instances have the processes of epigenesis or building up ab initio been repeatedly seen and traced.1

In the case of the ciliate infusory the following are the primary or preliminary steps in the formation of the proligerous pellicle, or Burdach's mucous layer.' In the clear filtered infusion a slightly opalescent appearance precedes the formation of the thin superficial film. This consists of molecules of various sizes, the most minute testing the highest powers of the microscope. These molecules I attribute to the act of formifaction, which in reference to organic matter in solution corresponds with the crystalline aggregation of mineral matter in solution. Solution of organic matter, such as clear serum from a blister, enclosed in 'goldbeater's' skin or other close membrane, and inserted beneath the integument of a living Mammal-even distilled water which so placed obtains the elements of formifaction by endosmosis -show its results in the form of granules, white blood-cells, pusglobules, &c. These experiments need repetition and modification mainly in reference to the objection that such leucocytes' might have wriggled their way, like Abæmæ, from without, through the

1 cccx". pp. 352-388. cccxi". pp. 133-253. cccxè”. pp. 121-129. cccxm”. p. 1046. cccxiv". p. 974. cccxv'. p. 467: Mantegazza spent sixteen consecutive hours in observing this genesis.

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close texture of the enclosing bag. In the proligerous pellicle the larger molecules unite end to end, forming bacteriums, or less regularly into masses composing Torula: these send out parts which become jointed tubes, and may terminate in rows of sporules (Penicillium) or capsules of such (Aspergillus). The bacteriums may, by further union and confluence, form vibrios. There is much activity, allied in character to the Brunonian movements; 2 which, after a time, ceases, and the bacteriums, vibrios, &c. are decomposed to constitute the secondary series of molecules in and from which the development of the higher ciliate Infusory takes place. The formation of the proligerous pellicle or secondary histolytic mass of molecules '3 by the primary developments and resolutions of the organic material, is analogous to the formation of the germ-mass, in ovo, by the successive spontaneous fissions, assimilations, and ultimate coalescence of the progeny of the original germinal cell.

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To meet the inevitable question of Whence the first organic matter?' the Nomogenist is reduced to enumerate the existing elements into which the simplest living jelly (Protogenes of Hæckel) or sarcode (Amaba) is resolvable, and to contrast the degree of probability of such elements combining, under unknown conditions, as the first step in the resolution of other forces into vital force, with the degree of probability remaining, after the observations above recorded, of the interposition of a miraculous power associating those elements into living germs, or forms with powers of propagating their kind to all time, as the sole condition of their ubiquitous manifestation, in the absence of any secondary law thereto ordained.

In this, the last general summary of work which I am likely to find time to complete, the expression of belief on one or two points where proof is wanting may be condoned. The chance

of its being a help, or encouragement, to any younger, more vigorous, mind, bent upon grappling with such problems, outweighs any anticipation of trouble consequent upon the avowal.

It seems to me, then, more consistent with the present phase of dynamical science and the observed gradations of living things, to suppose that sarcode or the protogenal' jelly-speck should be formable through concurrence of conditions favouring such combination of their elements and involving a change of force productive of their contractions and extensions, molecular attractions and repulsions and that sarcode has so become, from the period * ccxvi". p. 470, in all organic molecules, living or dead.

when its irrelative repetitions resulted in the vast indefinite masses of eozoon,' exemplifying the earliest process of formifaction' or organic crystallisation—than that all existing sarcodes or protogenes' are the result of genetic descent from a germ or cell due to a primary act of miraculous interposition.

Some, accepting the latter alternative, teach that, while generations of the first-created sarcode have descended to us unchanged from the period of the Laurentian limestone, other sarcodal offspring have developed and improved, or have been selected, into all higher forms of living beings. I prefer, however, while indulging in such speculations, to consider the various daily nomogeneously developed forms of protozoal or protistal jellies, sarcodes and single-celled organisms, to have been as many roots from which the higher grades have ramified, than that the origin of the whole organic creation is to be referred, as the Egyptian priests did that of the universe, to a single Egg.

Amber or steel when magnetised seem to exercise selection': they do not attract all substances alike. To the suitable ones at due distance they tend to move; but, through density of constitution, cannot outstretch thereto; so they draw the attracted' substance to themselves. If the amber be not rubbed, or the steel bar otherwise magnetised, they are dead' to such power. The movement of a free body to a magnet has always excited interest, often wonder, from its analogy to the self-motion so common and apparently peculiar to life.'

A speck of protogenal jelly or of sarcode, if alive, shows analogous relations to certain substances: but the soft yielding tissue allows the part next the attractive matter to move thereto, and then by retraction to draw such matter into the sarcodal mass, which overspreads, dissolves, and assimilates it. We say that the Protogenes or Amaba has extended a pseudopod,' has seized its prey, has drawn it in, swallowed, and digested it. No organs,' however, are recognisable; neither muscle, mouth, nor stomach.

If the portion of iron attracted by the magnet became blended with the substance of its attractor, the analogy thereto of the act of the abæma would be, perhaps, closer, more just, than that other analogy which is expressed by terms borrowed from the procedure of higher organisms.

From certain knowledge of the homogeneous, by some termed ' unorganised,' texture of Protogenes and Abama, we cannot predicate of their having sensation or exercising volition. Given life' and suitable organic substance at due distances, the act of making contact seems as inevitable, as independent of any voli