OCR Text |
Show 82 ORIGINATION OF LIVING .13EINGS. So that M. Pasteur arr1· ve d a t 1a s t at the clear and definite result, that all these appearances ~re like the case of the worms in the piece of meat, w hlC~ was refuted by Redi, simply germs. carried by the air and deposited in the liquids in whiCh they afte.rwards appear. For my own part, I conceive that, with the . l f M Pasteur's experiments before us, we partiCu ars o · . . . that canno t f:a 1" l to arrive at his conclusiOns' and • d the doctrine of spontaneous generation has recmve a final coup de grdce. . . You, of course, understand that all this l.n ~o way 1• nter1I! eres WI" th the possibility of the fabn. cabon of organic matters by the direct method to whiCh I have referred, remote as that possibility may be. LEC TURE IV. TilE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS, I-IEREDITARY TRANSNfiSSION AND -vARIATION. 'l1 HE inquiry which we undertook, at our last meeting, into the state of our knowledge of the causes of the phenomena of organic nature, -of the past and of the present,-resolved itself into two subsidia!'y inquiries : t he first was, whether we know anything, either hist orically or experimentally, of the mode of origin of living beings; the second subsidiary inquiry was, whether, granting the origin, we know anything about the perpetuation and modifications of the forms of organic beings. The reply which I had to give to the first question was altogether negative, and the chief result of my last lecture was, that, neither hist orically nor experimentally, do we at present know anything whatsoever about the origin of living forms. We saw that, historically, we are not likely to know anything about it, although we may perhaps learn something experimentally; but that at present we are an enormous distance from the goal I indicated. I now, then, take up the next question, What do we |