The straight linear bodies were darting backward and forward in every
direction. The wavy ones were wriggling about like eels or water-snakes.
The round ones were spinning on their axes and rolling in every
direction. All of them were in a state of incessant activity, as if
perpetually seeking something and never finding it.
They are tough, the germs of these little bodies, said the Master.
--Three hours' boiling has n't killed 'em. Now, then, let us see what
has been the effect of six hours' boiling.
He took up another flask just like the first, containing fluid and
hermetically sealed in the same way.
--Boiled just three hours longer than the other, he said,--six hours in
all. This is the experimentum crucis. Do you see any cloudiness in it?
--Not a sign of it; it is as clear as crystal, except that there may be
a little sediment at the bottom.
--That is nothing. The liquid is clear. We shall find no signs of
life.--He put a minute drop of the liquid under the microscope as
before. Nothing stirred. Nothing to be seen but a clear circle of light.
We looked at it again and again, but with the same result.
--Six hours kill 'em all, according to this experiment,--said the
Master.--Good as far as it goes. One more negative result. Do you know
what would have happened if that liquid had been clouded, and we had
found life in the sealed flask? Sir, if that liquid had held life in it
the Vatican would have trembled to hear it, and there would have been
anxious questionings and ominous whisperings in the halls of Lambeth
palace! The accepted cosmogonies on trial, sir!
Traditions, sanctities, creeds, ecclesiastical establishments, all
shaking to know whether my little sixpenny flask of fluid looks muddy
or not! I don't know whether to laugh or shudder. The thought of an
oecumenical council having its leading feature dislocated by my trifling
experiment! The thought, again, of the mighty revolution in human
beliefs and affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant little
phenomenon. A wine-glassful of clear liquid growing muddy. If we had
found a wriggle, or a zigzag, or a shoot from one side to the other, in
this last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be sure, in
the schools of the prophets! Talk about your megatherium and your
megalosaurus,--what are these to the bacterium and the vibrio? These are
the dreadful monsters of today. If they show themselves where they have
no business, the little rascals frighten honest folks worse than ever
people were frightened by the Dragon of Rhodes!
The Master gets going sometimes, there is no denying it, until his
imagination runs away with him. He had been trying, as the reader sees,
one of those curious experiments in spontaneous generation, as it is
called, which have been so often instituted of late years, and by
none more thoroughly than by that eminent American student of nature
(Professor Jeffries Wyman) whose process he had imitated with a result
like his.
We got talking over these matters among us the next morning at the
breakfast-table.
We must agree they couldn't stand six hours' boiling,--I said.
--Good for the Pope of Rome!--exclaimed the Master.
--The Landlady drew back with a certain expression of dismay in her
countenance. She hoped he did n't want the Pope to make any more
converts in this country. She had heard a sermon only last Sabbath, and
the minister had made it out, she thought, as plain as could be, that
the Pope was the Man of Sin and that the Church of Rome was--Well, there
was very strong names applied to her in Scripture.
What was good for the Pope was good for your minister, too, my dear
madam,--said the Master. Good for everybody that is afraid of what
people call “science.” If it should prove that dead things come to life
of themselves, it would be awkward, you know, because then somebody will
get up and say if one dead thing made itself alive another might, and
so perhaps the earth peopled itself without any help. Possibly the
difficulty wouldn't be so great as many people suppose. We might perhaps
find room for a Creator after all, as we do now, though we see a little
brown seed grow till it sucks up the juices of half an acre of ground,
apparently all by its own inherent power. That does not stagger us; I am
not sure that it would if Mr. Crosses or Mr. Weekes's acarus should
show himself all of a sudden, as they said he did, in certain mineral
mixtures acted on by electricity.
The Landlady was off soundings, and looking vacant enough by this time.
The Master turned to me.--Don't think too much of the result of our
one experiment. It means something, because it confirms those other
experiments of which it was a copy; but we must remember that a hundred
negatives don't settle such a question. Life does get into the world
somehow. You don't suppose Adam had the cutaneous unpleasantness
politely called psora, do you?
--Hardly,--I answered.--He must have been a walking hospital if he
carried all the maladies about him which have plagued his descendants.
--Well, then, how did the little beast which is peculiar to that special
complaint intrude himself into the Order of Things? You don't suppose
there was a special act of creation for the express purpose of bestowing
that little wretch on humanity, do you?