Spontaneous generation and Genesis.

— In our work Genesis, we developed the theory of spontaneous generation, presenting it as a probable hypothesis.

Some absolute partisans of this theory were astonished that we had not affirmed it as a principle. To this we shall reply that, if the question is settled for some, it is not so for all, and the proof is that Science is still divided on the matter. Moreover, it belongs to the scientific domain, where Spiritism cannot reap and where nothing falls to it to resolve in a definitive manner, in that which is not essentially within its competence.

From the fact that Spiritism assimilates all progressive ideas, it does not follow that it makes itself the blind champion of all new conceptions, however seductive they may be at first sight, at the risk of receiving, later on, a denial from experience and of exposing itself to the ridicule of having sponsored an unviable work. If it does not pronounce clearly on certain controverted questions, it is not, as one might believe, in order to humor both parties, but out of prudence, and so as not to advance frivolously onto a terrain not yet sufficiently explored. This is why it does not immediately accept new ideas, even those which seem just to it, except with much reserve, and in a definitive manner only when they have reached the state of recognized truths.

The question of spontaneous generation is in this number. For us, personally, it is a conviction, and had we treated it in an ordinary work, we would have resolved it in the affirmative; but in a work constitutive of the Spiritist Doctrine, individual opinions cannot make law; since the Doctrine is not based on probabilities, we could not decide a question of such gravity, only just emerged, and which is still in dispute among the specialists. To affirm the thing without restriction would have been to compromise the Doctrine prematurely, which we never do, even to make our own sympathies prevail.

What, up to now, has given strength to Spiritism, what has made of it a positive science with a future, is that it has never advanced frivolously; that it has not been constituted upon any preconceived system; that it has established no absolute principle upon the personal opinion either of a man or of a Spirit, but only after that principle had received the consecration of experience and of a rigorous demonstration, resolving all the difficulties of the question.

When, therefore, we formulate a principle, it is because, beforehand, we are certain of the assent of the majority of men and of Spirits. This is why we have had no disappointments. Such, too, is the reason why, in these nearly twelve years, none of the bases that constitute the Doctrine has received an official denial; the principles of The Spirits' Book were successively developed and completed, but none has fallen into disuse, and our writings are not, on any point, in contradiction with the first ones, despite the time elapsed and the new observations that have been made.

Certainly it would not be the same had we yielded to the suggestions of those who were continually shouting at us to go faster, and had we espoused all the theories that emerged from the right and the left. On the other hand, had we listened to those who asked us to go more slowly, we would still be observing the turning tables. We go forward when we feel that the moment is propitious and we see that minds are ripe to accept a new idea; but we hold back when we see that the terrain is not solid enough to set foot there. With our apparent slowness and our circumspection too meticulous for the taste of certain persons, we have made more progress than if we had set out to run, for we have avoided a tumble on the road. Having no reason to regret the course we have followed until now, we shall not deviate from it. This said, we shall complete with some observations what we said in Genesis concerning spontaneous generation.

The Review being a terrain for the study and elaboration of principles, and giving in it our opinion without circumlocution, we do not fear engaging the responsibility of the Doctrine, because the Doctrine will adopt it, if it is just, and will reject it, if it is false.

— Today it is a scientifically demonstrated fact that organic life has not always existed on Earth, and that it had a beginning there; geology allows us to follow its gradual development. The first beings of the vegetable kingdom and of the animal kingdom which then appeared must have formed themselves without procreation, and belong to the inferior classes, as geological observations attest. As the dispersed elements came together, the first combinations formed bodies that were exclusively inorganic, that is, stones, waters, and minerals of every sort. When these same elements were modified by the action of the vital fluid – which is not the intelligent principle – they formed bodies endowed with vitality, with a constant and regular organization, each in its species. Now, just as the crystallization of crude matter does not occur except when an accidental cause comes to oppose the symmetrical arrangement of the molecules, organized bodies form as soon as favorable circumstances of temperature, humidity, repose or movement, and a kind of fermentation allow the molecules of matter, vivified by the vital fluid, to come together. This is what is seen in all germs in which vitality can remain latent for years and centuries, and manifest itself at a given moment, when the circumstances are propitious. Non-procreated beings form, then, the first echelon of organic beings and, probably, will one day be counted in the scientific classification. As for the species that propagate by procreation, an opinion which is not new, but which today is becoming generalized under the aegis of Science, is that the first types of each species are the product of a modification of the immediately inferior species. Thus, an uninterrupted chain has been established, from moss and lichen up to the oak, and then the zoophyte, the earthworm, and the mite up to man. Without doubt, between the earthworm and man, if one considers only the two extreme points, there is a difference that seems an abyss; but when all the intermediate links are brought together, one finds a filiation without solution of continuity. The partisans of this theory which, we repeat, tends to prevail, and to which we adhere without reserve, are far from being all spiritualists, and still less Spiritists. Considering only matter, they make abstraction of the spiritual or intelligent principle. This question, then, prejudges nothing concerning the filiation of this principle from animality into humanity; it is a thesis that we are not going to treat today, but which is already being debated in certain non-materialist philosophical schools. It is therefore a matter only of the carnal envelope, distinct from the Spirit, as the house is from its inhabitant. Then the body of man may perfectly well be a modification of the body of the ape, without it being concluded that his spirit is the same as that of the ape [for the understanding of these last words see]. (Genesis, chapter XI, no. 15.) The question that pertains to the formation of this envelope is nonetheless very important, first because it resolves a grave scientific problem and destroys prejudices long ingrained by ignorance, and then because those who study it exclusively will run up against insurmountable difficulties when they wish to account for all the effects, absolutely as if they wished to explain the effects of telegraphy without electricity. They will find the solution of these difficulties only in the action of the spiritual principle which, after all, they will have to admit, in order to emerge from the impasse in which they will be engaged, on pain of leaving their theory incomplete.

Let materialism, then, study the properties of matter; that study is indispensable, and it will be made: spiritualism will only have to complete the work in that which concerns it. Let us accept its discoveries and not be disquieted by its absolute conclusions, for, its insufficiency to resolve everything being demonstrated, the necessities of a rigorous logic will necessarily lead to spirituality; and general spirituality itself being incapable of resolving the innumerable problems of present life and of future life, the only possible key will be found in the more positive principles of Spiritism. We already see a number of men arriving by themselves at the consequences of Spiritism, without knowing it, some beginning with reincarnation, others with the perispirit. They do as Pascal did, who discovered the elements of geometry without prior study, and without suspecting that what he imagined he had discovered was an already accomplished work. A day will come when serious thinkers, studying this doctrine with the attention it warrants, will be quite surprised to find in it what they were seeking, and will proclaim as already accomplished a work whose existence they did not suspect. It is thus that everything is linked together in the world; from crude matter came organic beings, ever more perfected; from materialism will come, by the force of things and by logical deduction, general spiritualism, then Spiritism, which is nothing other than particularized spiritualism, supported by facts.

— Does what took place at the origin of the world for the formation of the first organic beings take place in our days, by means of what is called spontaneous generation? Such is the question. For our part, we do not hesitate to pronounce ourselves in the affirmative.

The partisans and the adversaries reciprocally oppose to one another experiments that gave contrary results; but these latter forget that the phenomenon cannot occur except under suitable conditions of temperature and aeration; seeking to obtain it outside these conditions, they must necessarily fail.

It is known, for example, that for the artificial hatching of eggs there is need of a determined regular temperature, and certain special minute precautions. Whoever should deny such hatching because he had not obtained it with a few degrees more or less, and without the necessary precautions, would be in the same case as one who does not obtain spontaneous generation in an improper medium. It seems to us, then, that if this generation necessarily occurred in the first ages of the globe, there is no reason why it should not occur in our epoch, if the conditions are the same, as there is no reason why limestones, oxides, acids, and salts should not form, as in the first period.

Today it is recognized that the roughnesses of mold constitute a vegetation that is born upon organic matter arrived at a certain degree of fermentation. Mold seems to us to be the first, or one of the first types of spontaneous vegetation, and this primitive vegetation which is prolonged, taking on diverse forms according to the medium and the circumstances, gives us the lichens, the mosses, etc. Do they want a more direct example? What are the hair, the beard, and the body hair of animals, if not a spontaneous vegetation?

Animalized organic matter, that is, containing a certain proportion of nitrogen, gives rise to worms that have all the characters of a spontaneous generation. When man or any animal is alive, the activity of the circulation of the blood and the incessant functioning of the organs maintain a temperature and a molecular movement that prevent the constitutive elements of this generation from forming and coming together. When the animal is dead, the cessation of the circulation and of movement, and the lowering of the temperature to a certain limit, produce putrid fermentation and, in consequence, the formation of new chemical compounds. It is then that all the tissues are seen suddenly invaded by myriads of worms that feed upon them, without doubt to hasten their destruction. How would they have been procreated, seeing that beforehand there was no trace of them? It will be objected, no doubt, that they are the eggs of flies in the dead flesh. But this would prove nothing, because the eggs of flies are deposited on the surface, and not in the interior of the tissues, and because flesh, placed out of reach of flies, is no less rotten and full of worms after a certain time; very often, even, they are seen invading the body before death, when there is a partial beginning of putrid decomposition, notably in gangrenous wounds.

Certain species of worms form [develop] during life, even in a state of apparent health, above all in lymphatic individuals, whose blood is poor and who do not have the superabundance of life that is noted in others; these are the roundworms or intestinal worms; the tapeworms or solitary worms, which sometimes attain sixty meters in length and reproduce by fragments, like the polyps and certain plants; certain “worms,” peculiar to the black race and to certain climates, of a length of thirty to thirty-five centimeters, thin as a thread, and which come out through the skin by pustules; the ascarids, the trichocephali, etc. They often form masses so considerable that they obstruct the digestive canal, rise to the stomach and even to the mouth; they traverse the tissues, lodge themselves in the cavities or around the viscera, coil up like nests of caterpillars, and cause grave disorders in the economy [in the organism]. Their formation might well be due to a spontaneous generation, having its source in a special pathological state, in the alteration of the tissues, in the weakening of the vital principles, and in the morbid secretions. The same could be the case with the worms of cheese, with the mite of scabies, and with a number of animalcules that can be born in the air, in the water, and in organic bodies. n One could suppose, it is true, that the germs of the intestinal worms were introduced into the economy [into the organism] with the air that is breathed and with the food, and that they hatched there. But then another difficulty arises: one would ask why the same cause does not produce the same effect in all; why not everyone has the tapeworm, nor even roundworms, when feeding and respiration produce identical physiological effects in all. This explanation, moreover, would not be applicable to the worms of putrid decomposition that appear after death, nor to those of cheese and so many others. Until proof to the contrary, we are led to consider them as being, at least in part, a product of spontaneous generation, like the zoophytes and certain polyps.

The difference of sexes that has been recognized, or that has been thought to be recognized in certain intestinal worms, notably in the trichocephalus, would not be a conclusive objection, taking into account that they nonetheless belong to the order of inferior animals and, for that very reason, primitive. Now, as the difference of the sexes must have had a beginning, nothing would be opposed to their being born spontaneously male or female.

Moreover, these are but hypotheses, but ones that seem to come in support of the principle. How far does its application extend? that is what one could not say. What can be affirmed is that it must be circumscribed to vegetables and to animals of the simplest organization, and it does not seem doubtful to us that we are witnessing an incessant creation.

[1] [The progresses of science permit us, today, a better understanding of the question relating to the contamination and incubation of pathological microorganisms.]