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THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE

This leads me to the second main thesis or central scientific doctrine of Professor Haeckel's treatise, the biological one; and it is this which I shall now proceed to illustrate by further quotations, viz., the connection as he conceives it between life and matter.

His view is that life has arisen from inorganic matter without antecedent life. The experimental facts of biogenesis he discards in favour of a hypothetical and at present undiscovered kind of spontaneous generation. He assumes that the chemico-physical properties of carbon confer so peculiar a power on its albuminoid compounds that they develop into living protoplasm. He says that he formulated this view thirty-three years ago, and that no better monistic theory has arisen to replace it, while to reject some form of spontaneous generation is to admit a miracle:—