Life in the Word 183 thought to have been successful. Infusions of hay were pre pared which, after being tightly sealed in suitable flasks, were heated to a temperature sufficiently high (as was supposed) to destroy all life within the flasks. These were then set aside for awhile, and kept under observation; and in the course of time they were found to contain minute livng organisms. These “results of science” were heralded far and wide, and great was the rejoicing occasioned thereby. But other men of science, among whom the most prominent was Liebig, went over the ground again, repeating the experi ments more carefully; and their results showed that, in the earlier experiments, either the flasks had not been tightly sealed, or else the heat to which they were exposed had not been sufficiently great to destroy all the living organisms therein. So conclusive were these later experiments that the theory of spontaneous generation (or “abiogenesis”) has had no standing whatever from that time to the present. The following quotations will accurately inform the reader as to the best scientific opinion on this subject. Lord Kelvin who, until his recent death, held the leading place among scientific men, used this positive language: Inanimate matter cannot become living except under the influence of matter already living. This is a fact in science which seems to me .as well ascertained as the law of gravita tion.” Again he said: “I am ready to accept as an article of faith in science, valid for all time and in all space,'that life is pro duced by life and only by life.” Professor Huxley, the advocate of the theory of “animal automatism,” who at one time contended earnestly that vitality was merely a property of “protoplasm,” (that is to say, the property of a particular chemical compound of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen) left this record before‘his death: “The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living.”
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