Doctrine of Descent & Darwinism (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ...causal series, against which our intellect rebels by reason of its inherent craving for causality." Whoever does not share this craving is beyond help, and he cannot be convinced. To hold the beginning of life as an arbitrary act of creation, is to break with the whole theory of cognition. The verdict, as to the beginning of life, is commonly dependent on the standpoint adopted with respect to the possibility of primordial or spontaneous generation (generatio equivoca). This course is, in our opinion, only half correct. The subtlest experiments on spontaneous generation, whether from organic matter or from constituents not yet combined into molecules of organic matter, have proved indecisive on both sides. Neither the impossibility nor the possibility can be experimentally demonstrated; it always remains open to the sceptic to say, if nothing appears, that the failure of spontaneous generation is due to the-conditions of the experiment; or if anything does make its appearance, that, notwithstanding every precaution, germs made their way into the infusion. Opinion as to continued primordial genesis still taking place, is thus a mere emanation of the general theory of nature held by each individual. To any one who holds open the possibility that, even now, animate may be evolved from inanimate existence,"/ithout the mediation of progenitors, the first origin of life in this natural method is at once self-evident. But even if the proof were given, which never can be given, that in the present world spontaneous generation does not occur, the inference would be false that it never did occur. When our planet had reached the phase of development in which the temperature of the surface admitted of the formation of water and the...