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Show J • ADDITIONAL NOTES. SPONTANEOUS VITALITY OF MICROSCOPIC ANIMALS. Hence without parent by spontaneous birth Rise the first specks of animated earth. Pryjudices against this doctrine. CANTO I. 1. 227 . I. Fn.oM the misconception of the ignorant or superstitious, it has been thought somewhat profane to speak in favour of spontaneous vital production, as if it contradicted holy writ; which says, that God created animals and vegetables. They do not recollect that God created all things which exist, and that these l1ave been from the beginning in a perpetual state of improvement; which appears from the globe itself, as w 11 as from the animals and vegetables, which possess it. And lastly, that there is more dignity in our idea of the supreme author of all things, when we conceive him to be the cause of causes, than the cause simply of the events, which we see; if there can be any difference in infinity of power! Another prejudice which has prevailed against the spontaneous production of vitality, seems to have arisen from the mi representation of this doctrine, as if the larger animals had been thus produced; as Ovid supposes after the deluge of Deucalion, that lions were seen risino· out of the mud of the Nile, and struggling to disentangle their b ' hinder parts. It was 110t considered, that animals and vegetables have been pcrpctua.lly improving by reproduction; and that spontaneous vitality was only to be looked for in the simplest organic beings, • as in the smallest microscopic animalcules; which perpetually, perhaps hourly enlaro·e themselves bv reproduction, like the roots of tulips ' b M fi·om seed, or the buds of seedling trees, which die annually, leaving others by solitary reproduction rather more perfect than themselves B |