Evolution and the origin of life / by H. Charlton Bastian.

  • Henry Charlton Bastian
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution and the origin of life / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    74/214 page 56
    from higher to lower forms of Hfe, till at the last it is maintained as a mode of origin only for the very lowest and most minute of living things, has been regarded by man)'- (as I have already pointed out) as one of the most weighty arguments against this kind of generation. But this objection, as before shown, is robbed of all its seeming strength when it is said that the modern Evolutionist would onh- expect to obtain evidence concerning the de novo origin of the minutest specks of Living Matter—gradually emerging into the region of the visible and subse- quently developing into the most elementary Forms of Life. Thus the formula, omne vivum ex vivo, has even no sufficient a p^dori warrant. It is an induction which has been formed after a partial scrutiny of the facts—one that has been arrived at, not in accord- ance with the modern methods of experimental inquiry, but by the ancient custom of mere passive obsejvatipn and enumeration, against which the founder of the Inductive Philosophy so strongly raised his voice.* So far, then, it would seem that at least as much is to be said in favour of the new as of the old hypothesis, even from a mere prima facie considera- * Named by him Inductio 'per enumerationem simplicem, ubi non reperitur instaiUia contradictoria.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3