hly upset, for his time at least. But the microscope revealed
in "pure" water the presence of thousands of small creatures, the
infusoria. Again spontaneous generation was appealed to in order to
explain their presence. But the famous experiments of Pasteur (related
by Huxley in his lectures on The Origin of Species, Lecture III), proved
conclusively that sterilized water will not produce living forms when
the germs floating everywhere about in the air are excluded. Since that
time all men of science agree that there is no such thing demonstrable
as spontaneous generation. It has become an axiom that "Life only comes
from life." But how the first germs of life originated, is a question
for which there is no answer. Huxley admits: "Of the causes which led to
the origination of living matter it may be said that we know absolutely
nothing." "The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link
between the living and the not living."

However, while spontaneous generation is "absolutely inconceivable"
(Darwin), and while no experiments made on dead matter have ever
produced living (plant and animal) matter, life must have originated at
some time from non-life according to the evolutionary hypothesis. The
theory assumes that at some time the globe was in an incandescent stage.
At that time there could not have been any life on our earth. But as the
earth cooled, it is held that by some chemico-electric action (electric
force acting upon elements in favorable combinations), inert, lifeless
matter became endowed with the property which we call life, and this
original living substance is called protoplasm. From it, by successive
modifications, slow in their operation, the teeming variety of living
things is believed to have developed. Now it is a notable fact, that
many evolutionists (among them Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer
of the theory which goes under Darwin's name) frankly admit the
inability to account for the origin of protoplasm. From mineral
substances, protoplasm differs in that it possesses the power of growth,
development, and reproduction. The very first vegetable cell "must have
possessed altogether new powers," says Mr. Wallace, "that of extracting
carbon from the air and that of indefinite reproduction. Here,"--note
this admission,--"we have indications of _a new power_ at work." In
other words, forces resident in matter no longer suffice. The
evolutionistic principle breaks down.

Some fifty ye