old _omne vivum ex ovo_ in a modern form.[1]

But here the same sort of argument that was brought forward regarding
the possibility of matter and its laws being self-caused, comes in as
regards life.


[Footnote 1: _See_ "Critiques and Addresses," T.H. Huxley, F.R.S.,
p. 239. So much is this the case, that it is really superfluous, however
interesting, to recall the experiments of Dr. Tyndall and others, which
finally demonstrated that wherever primal animal forms, bacteria and
other, "microbes," were produced in infusions of hay, turnip, &c.,
apparently boiled and sterilized and then hermetically sealed, there
were really germs in the air enclosed in the vessel, or germs that in
one form or another were not destroyed by the boiling or heating. Dr.
Bastian's argument for spontaneous generation is thus completely
overthrown. _(See_ Drummond, "Natural Law," pp. 62-63.)]

The argument in the most direct form was made use of by Professor
Huxley, but it is difficult to believe that so powerful a thinker could
seriously hold to a view which will not bear examination, however neatly
and brilliantly it may go off when first launched into the air. The
argument is that life can only be regarded as a further property of
certain forms of matter. Oxygen and hydrogen, when they combine, result
in a new substance, quite unlike either of them in character, and
possessing _new_ and different properties. The way in which the
combination is effected is a mystery, yet we do not account for the new
and peculiar properties of water (so different from those of the
original gases) as arising from a principle of "aquosity," which we have
to invoke from another world. The answer is that the argument is from