My dear Wallace,—I have at last finished the gigantic job of reading Dr. Bastian's book, and have been deeply interested in it. You wished to hear my impression, but it is not worth sending.
He seems to me an extremely able man, as indeed I thought when I read his first essay. His general argument in favour of archebiosis[93] is wonderfully strong; though I cannot think much of some few of his arguments. The result is that I am bewildered and astonished by his statements, but am not convinced; though on the whole it seems to me probable that archebiosis is true. I am not convinced partly I think owing to the deductive [pg 275]cast of much of his reasoning; and I know not why, but I never feel convinced by deduction, even in the case of H. Spencer's writings. If Dr. B.'s book had been turned upside down, and he had begun with the various cases of heterogenesis, and then gone on to organic and afterwards to saline solutions, and had then given his general arguments, I should have been, I believe, much more influenced. I suspect, however, that my chief difficulty is the effect of old convictions being stereotyped on my brain. I must have more evidence that germs or the minutest fragments of the lowest forms are always killed by 212° of Fahr. Perhaps the mere reiteration of the statements given by Dr. B. by other men whose judgment I respect and who have worked long on the lower organisms would suffice to convince me. Here is a fine confession of intellectual weakness; but what an inexplicable frame of mind is that of belief.
As for Rotifers and Tardigrades being spontaneously generated, my mind can no more digest such statements, whether true or false, than my stomach can digest a lump of lead.
Dr. B. is always comparing archebiosis as well as growth to crystallisation; but on this view a Rotifer or Tardigrade is adapted to its humble conditions of life by a happy accident; and this I cannot believe. That observations of the above nature may easily be altogether wrong is well shown by Dr. B. having declared to Huxley that he had watched the entire development of a leaf of Sphagnum. He must have worked with very impure materials in some cases, as plenty of organisms appeared in a saline solution not containing an atom of nitrogen.
I wholly disagree with Dr. B. about many points in his latter chapters. Thus the frequency of generalised forms in the older strata seems to me clearly to indicate the common descent with divergence of more recent forms. [pg 276] Notwithstanding all his sneers, I do not strike my colours as yet about pangenesis. I should like to live to see archebiosis proved true, for it would be a discovery of transcendent importance; or if false I should like to see it disproved, and the facts otherwise explained; but I shall not live to see all this. If ever proved, Dr. B. will have taken a prominent part in the work. How grand is the onward rush of science; it is enough to console us for the many errors which we have committed and for our efforts being overlaid and forgotten in the mass of new facts and new views which are daily turning up.
This is all I have to say about Dr. B.'s book, and it certainly has not been worth saying. Nevertheless, reward me whenever you can by giving me any news about your appointment to the Bethnal Green Museum.—My dear Wallace, yours very sincerely,
CH. DARWIN.
The Dell, Grays, Essex. August 31, 1872.
Dear Darwin,—Many thanks for your long and interesting letter about Bastian's book, though I almost regret that my asking you for your opinion should have led you to give yourself so much trouble. I quite understand your frame of mind, and think it quite a natural and proper one. You had hard work to hammer your views into people's heads at first, and if Bastian's theory is true he will have still harder work, because the facts he appeals to are themselves so difficult to establish. Are not you mistaken about the Sphagnum? As I remember it, Huxley detected a fragment of Sphagnum leaf in the same solution in which a fungoid growth had been developed. Bastian mistook the Sphagnum also for a vegetable growth, and on account of this ignorance of the character of Sphagnum, and its presence in the solution, Huxley rejected somewhat contemptuously (and I think very illogically) all Bastian's [pg 277]observations. Again, as to the saline solution without nitrogen, would not the air supply what was required?