LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE

"No biological generalization rests on a wider series of observations,
or has been subjected to a more critical scrutiny, than that every
living organism has come into existence from a living portion or
portions of a pre-existing organism."[3]

"Was there anything so absurd as to believe that a number of atoms, by
falling together of their own accord, could make a sprig of moss, a
microbe, a living animal? ... It is utterly absurd.... Here scientific
thought is compelled to accept the idea of creative power. Forty years
ago I asked Liebig ... if he believed that the grass and flowers, which
we saw around us, grew by mere mechanical force. He answered, 'No more
than I could believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by
mere chemical force.'"[4]

"Let them not imagine that any hocus-pocus of electricity or viscous
fluids would make a living cell.... Nothing approaching to a cell of
living creature has ever yet been made.... No artificial process
whatever could make living matter out of dead."[5]

[Footnote 3: P.C. Mitchell, in Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. III, p.
952.]

[Footnote 4: Lord Kelvin in the London _Times_, May 4, 1903.]

[Footnote 5: Lord Kelvin, to a class of Medical Students, October 28,
1904.]