inorganic into the living organic existence. Pasteur and Lionel Beale, Virchow and Tyndall unite in testifying that there never has yet been discovered any proof of any case of spontaneous generation.

In making the experiments by which Bastian and Haeckel supposed they had shown spontaneous generation they employed great heats to destroy all existing forms of life from the space in which they claim that life afterward spontaneously appeared. They either did so destroy life or they did not. If they did not, then there was no spontaneous generation. If they did, then what afterward appeared could not have come in the way of evolution. Now, the original living thing was on the planet before its greatest heat period, or else appeared thereafter. the former, and it passed through all the fierceness of that heat, then the experimenters mentioned above killed nothing by heat, and so their experiments proved nothing; if it was introduced after the greatest heat period, then life came ab extra, and not by evolution.

If

If a single instance could be found it

would be a greater miracle than would be exhibited by a living man's calling a dead man to life. In the latter case the corpse would have an organism not only adapted to life but also having already had the habits of life, and the vital force would be sent into it ab extra, from a life already in existence. But in the former case it would be a thing without life performing what could be done only by a thing with life that itself might become a living thing.

Herbert Spencer ("First Principles," p. 32):

To conceive self-creation is to conceive potential existence passing into actual existence by some inherent necessity, which we cannot do. We cannot form any idea of a potential existence of the universe, as distinguished from its actual existence. We have no state of consciousness answering to the words-an inherent necessity by which potential existence became actual existence. Το render them into thought, existence, having for an indefinite period remained in one form, must be conceived as passing without any external or additional impulse into another form; and this involves the idea of a change without a cause; a thing of which no idea is possible.

Still, this would be no valid objection if a case could be produced. There is no gain in discussing the question whether or not A killed B until it be shown that B is at least dead.

There will probably be admitted to be no more trustworthy testimony on questions of science than that of Professor Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S., and he says:

There are no scientific facts which can at all warrant the conclusion that non-living matter only, under any conceivable circumstances, can be converted into living matter, or at any previous time has, by any combination, or under any conditions that may have existed, given rise to the formation of anything which possesses, or has possessed, life.

Professor Huxley says:

Not only is the kind of evidence adduced in favor of abiogenesis [non-living producing living] logically insufficient to furnish proof of its occurrence, but it may be stated as a well-proved induction that the more careful the investigator, and the more complete his mastery over the endless practical difficulties which surround experimentation on this subject, the more certain are his experiments to give a negative result; while positive results are no less sure to crown the efforts of the clumsy and the careless.

And again,

The fact is, that at the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place, or has taken place, within the period during which the existence of life on the globe is recorded.*

Professor Tyndall says:

True men of science will frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life. †

In another place he says:

I here affirm, that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of antecedent life.

And once more he declares

that every attempt made in our day to generate life independently of antecedent life has utterly broken down. §

After long and minute experimentation in reference to spontaneous generation, Pasteur gives this as his assured conclusion:

*

Encyclopædia Britannica; article on Biology.

Fragments of Science, vol. ii., p. 194, Belfast Address.
Nineteenth Century, March, 1878, p. 507.

Fragments of Science, preface to the sixth edition, p. vi.

There is no case known at the present day in which we can affirm that microscopic creatures have come into existence without germs, without parents like themselves. Those who pretend that they do have been the dupes of illusions, of experiments badly performed, vitiated by mistakes which they have not been able to perceive, or which they have not known how to avoid.*

Professor Virchow, of Berlin, says:

This generatio æquivoca [by which he means spontaneous generation], which has been so often contested and so often contradicted, is, nevertheless, always meeting us afresh. To be sure, we know not a single positive fact to prove that a generatio æquivoca has ever been made, that inorganic masses, such as the firm of Carbon & Co., have ever spontaneously developed themselves into organic masses. No one has ever seen a generatio æquivoca effected; and whoever supposes that it has occurred is contradicted by the naturalist, and not merely by the theologian.. We must acknowledge that it has not yet been proved.t

Professor Elliott Coues ("Biogen," p. 39)

says:

If life inhered in matter as the necessary result of any particular composition of matter, death would

* Revue des Cours scientifiques, 23 Avril, 1864, p. 265; article Des Générations spontanées.

The Freedom of Science in the Modern State, p. 36 (2d Ed.).