Buffon imagined life-like matter to be indestructible, and that each organism was built up of a number of molecules, and that each molecule had a life of its own, and the death of one of these complex compounds was simply the dissolution of one of these associations; and thus he says, these molecules are again set at liberty, and wander about until they are once more combined with an animal or a plant; and as Coleridge has beautifully said "Organic harps are living things, That tremble into thought, As the one breath sweeps o'er their strings, Spinosa, who held a rather different opinion to that of Buffon, believed that there is in nature only one substance, and that this substance is infinitely diversified, having within its own essence the necessary causes of the changes through which it goes. In the investigations into the development of life, and to which the title of Spontaneous Generation has been given, I shall have to direct your special attention. We have in this something similar to that which Buffon alludes when speaking of "the wandering molecules;" for when the portions of the organisms have become disintegrated or broken down, the molecules and cells of which they were formed are set free, and it is to the study of these in their separate and also in their aggregate forms that I shall have to direct your attention. A molecule is believed to be an aggregation of atoms; and it is only in the molecular form that we are able to recognise matter in its highest state of disintegration; and although we are enabled to examine with our instruments the apparently extreme points of matter, yet there is a world which lies beyond, as yet invisible-the "atomic." One of the most recent and apparently one of the best informed philosophers in treating of this subject-the "atomic theory"*-Professor Bayma-believes each atom to be spherical in form, and surrounded by a repulsive electric ether, the atom itself being attractive; and that every point of matter acts instantaneously upon every other point at all distances, however great or small, with a force having the same character at all distances, and inversely to the square of that distance. But I hold with Professor Norton that this is assuming too much, as no proof has been established that an atom is spherical in form, or that it is a material point. "In fact, it appears to be highly probable, as supposed by Brodie, and strongly urged Philosophical Magazine,” 1869. |