Diary

At present our leading men of science are in this difficulty; on the one hand their experiments and their theories alike teach them that spontaneous generation ought not to be accepted; on the other, they must have an origin for the life of the living forms, which, by their own theory, have been evolved, and they can at present get this origin in no other way than by the Deus ex machinâ method, which they reject as unproved, or a spontaneous generation of living from non-living matter, which is no less foreign to their experience.  As a general rule, they prefer the latter alternative