Chapter 14

Spontaneous generation

490. 'Spontaneous generation', as we call it, is denied today; 'putrefaction', as the ancients called it, was greatly supported by them. But if spontaneous generation were a fact, it would be, according to our theory, part of the universal law governing the multiplication of animals.

If the organisation of something felt and, consequently, the matter of an animal body, were to break up, so that neither the unity of feeling nor the specific characteristic of the harmony of its actions could be preserved, the conflict between these actions would be such that instead of co-operating in preserving the unity of the felt, they would all go their own way, and each centre would strive to achieve independence.

This inner struggle between the various activities of the feeling would arise in virtually all the points of what is felt as extended. The resulting disunion and dissolution, which would explain the phenomenon of putrefaction, would also explain the formation of very tiny animals. The difference between this kind of multiplication and the other three or four would simply be this: while the other kinds propagate an animal of the same species or transform it, this breaks up the animal to compose, from its bits and fragments, other animals of a different species, a real generatio aequivoca.

491. In the middle of the last century, a Catholic priest in England revived the opinion of spontaneous generation, and attempted to prove it with microscopic experiments.(226) Since that time many natural scientists have maintained it, including Vrisberg, Otto Friedrich Müller, Ingenhousz, Bloch, Lamarck, Treviranus, F. Meckel, Rudolphi,(227) Bremser, De Blainville,(228) Fray,(229) Carl Friedrich Burdach, Della Chiaie,(230) etc.; it has now become, we can say, almost a common opinion among natural scientists.(231)

A footnote in Richerand's Nuovi Elementi di Fisiologia speaks about infusoria as follows:

492. Materialists saw spontaneous generation as a proof of their system. Motivated by this second end, they tenaciously upheld it and proclaimed victory.(233) For the same reason, thinkers who admitted the spirituality of the soul attacked the opinion.

493. Both sides are mistaken. If the fact of spontaneous generation is really present in nature, we do not have to say, as Cabanis does, that pure matter itself acquires life by its own effort.(234) Rather, we must say that it was already alive, and that the principle of life which was in it acted in its matter to produce the organism. This important fact would itself be very clear proof of an immaterial principle.

494. A doctor of the Broussais school, in reply to Becquerel's question, 'How does inorganic nature become organic nature?'(235) says: 'Spontaneous generations could be of great help in answering the question. If it were true that dead matter could take on organisation through its own forces, the question would be mostly answered.'(236) But spontaneous generations would never demonstrate that matter was dead; on the contrary they would show clearly that it was alive.(237)

495. All that is needed is a clear understanding of the concept of body or matter; both are the term of feeling. This is the only idea we have of them without the intervention of the imagination. The term of feeling requires a feeling principle, and this principle must be totally simple; if it were extended, it would be term. The problem therefore is reduced to our acceptance of the idea of body and matter at the very moment we acquire it, before we change it with our imagination. The question, presented clearly in this form, is answered at once because we see that wherever there is feeling, there is an essentially simple soul.

496. In the book which contains the most ancient origins of the things of this world, God commands the earth to bring forth vegetables even before the sun and moon shine. After these two lights have been placed in the heavens, God commands liquid substance to produce reptiles, fish and birds; thus the waters and the air were populated. He next commands the earth to produce beasts of burden, snakes and animals according to their kind, and the earth obeys.(238)

It would be the greatest absurdity and totally gratuitous to conclude from this that material substances which produce animals at God's word were entirely devoid of life. Moses himself says that the spirit of God fertilised the waters from the very creation of matter.(239) Some of the older Fathers understood 'spirit of God' as the spirit of life, animator of things.

497. We can see the reason for the phrase, 'fertilise the waters', that is, liquid rather than solid matter, if we note that only subtle matter is suitable for the spontaneous generation of animals. I will give an explanation for this later.

498. St. Theophilus, who became bishop of Antioch in 168 AD, declares that Moses

An authority as ancient as this is solemn authority.

499. The fact that material substance, fertilised in this way, can be organised by the living principle into various forms according to circumstances, is not materialism.

When Cuvier studied fossil bones, he found many kinds of animals that had completely disappeared (the palaeotherium, anoplotherium, anthracotherium, plesiosaurus, megalosaurus, pterodactyl, ichthyosaurus, etc.). Evidently, the temperature of the globe, the fecundity of the earth and circumstances influencing organisation must have differed from those of today. These vanished species, so different from what we have now, were considered as the product of the earth invested with a different power, in different atmospheric circumstances, etc. Whatever opinion we follow in these things and no matter how erroneous it may be, it will never favour materialism. Even if a mastodon or a rhinoceros, formed all at once, emerged out of the soil, the only thing we could reasonably induce was that a vital principle was in the soil as the hidden organiser of those great bodies.

Notes

(226) J. Turberville Needham, Microscopical Discoveries, London, 1745 - in French, Paris, 1750.

(227) Entozoorum sive Vermium intestinalium Historia Naturalis, Berlin, 1819.

(228) Appendix to Bremser's Traité des Vers intestins, p. 563.

(229) Essai sur l'origine des êtres organisés.

(230) Compendio di elmintologia umana.

(231) A recent opponent of spontaneous generation is D.C.C. Ehrenberg, whose work was translated into French by Manol under the title, Traité pratique du microscope, suivi de Recherches sur l'organisation des animaux infusoires (Paris, 1839). Prof. Medici accepts spontaneous generation of animals below insects but not of insects. In a learned letter written to Prof. Secondo Berruti, Medici maintains the spontaneous generation of insects (Giornale delle Scienze Mediche, Turin, vol. 6). The letter, which provoked an erudite discussion among many professors, is reported in Rendiconto dei lavori della Società Medico-Chirurgico di Torino, edited by Dr. Secondo Polto, n. 28, and also in vol. 1 of the Atti of the Society.

(232) Nuovi Elementi del Richerand migliorati da Bernard Seniore, tradotti dal D. Paolo Dall' Aqua, pref. §5.

(233) Système de la Nature, vol. 1, c. 2. Diderot, Pensées sur l'interpretation de la Nature, §12, 58: 2. Robinot, Vue philosophique de la graduation naturelle des formes de l'être, Amsterdam, 1768. De la Mettrie, Abrégé des systèmes - L'homme plante, and other authors of this persuasion.

(234) Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, Dixième Mémoire, première sect., §2.

(235) Becquerel, Traité de l'électricité et du magnétisme, vol. 1, p. 430.

(236) He immediately added: 'The spiritualists have understood this very well. Consequently, they do their utmost to make the contrary opinion prevail.' M-S. Houdart, Études historiques et critiques sur la vie et la doctrine d'Hyppocrate etc., Paris, 1836.

(237) F. Berard added some wise footnotes to the Lettera postuma di Cabanis sulle Cause prime (Paris, 1824). In a footnote on p. 60, he says, 'In the production of living beings there is a real vicious circle from which no escape is possible. One living being, or part of a living being, is necessary for producing another. The production of life always presupposes life. To make living organs, living matter is necessary, and to make living matter, living organs are necessary. A living being can be made only once, and all of a piece; if it is not perfect in itself, it cannot exist.'

(238) Gen 1.

(239) 'And the spirit of God moved over the waters' (Gen 1: 2 [Douai]). The Hebrew word translated as 'moved' properly speaking means 'incubated'.

(240) The Latin translation, which is all I have before me, says: 'Spiritum autem qui ferebatur super aquas, eum intelligit quem dedit Deus creaturae ad viventium generationem, velut animam homini, tenue cum tenui conjungens (nam spiritus tenuis et aqua tenuis) ut spiritus aquam, AQUA AUTEM CUM SPIRITU (not water alone, as the materialists imagine) omnia pervadens creaturam foveret' (Ad Autolyc., 2, 13).