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Systems seem, like certain worms, to be formed by a kind of generatio aequivoca by the mere confluence of conceptions, and to gain completeness only with the progress of time. But the schema or germ of all lies in reason; and thus is not only every system organized according to its own idea, but all are united into one grand system of human knowledge, of which they form members.
On the other hand it was one of the characteristics and axioms of scientific thought to reject this naïve generatio equivoca, and to hold fast to the proposition, omne vivum ex ovo, or, at least, omne vivum ex vivo.
In these works Lamarck upholds fully the descent and evolution theory, and maintains that the simplest organisms are generated through a generatio spontanea, which is still taking place; but that all the more developed organisms, including man, are descended through a gradual change from other species.
Now there are only two ways in which a necessary harmony of experience with the conceptions of its objects can be cogitated. Either experience makes these conceptions possible, or the conceptions make experience possible. The assertion of an empirical origin would attribute to them a sort of generatio aequivoca.
But a short time after Pasteur’s discoveries, the ideas of Darwinism and the theory of evolution gained widespread acceptance. And now it appeared that, in rejecting the theory of generatio equivoca, naturalists had, so to speak, sawn off the branch on which they desired to sit, and thus many, like Haeckel, became enthusiastic converts to the theory which natural science had previously rejected.
If we add further, that the two old maxims of the natural scientists, omne vivum ex ovo and omne ovum ex ovario, have not been invalidated, in spite of all the searching for a generatio æquivoca, and that, even if the origination of the lowest organisms out of the inorganic could in future be proved, yet the truth of these maxims for all the higher organized individuals is established as a fact without exception.
Non substantia, non qualitas, agere, pati, ipsum esse, bonae notiones sunt; multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue, humidum, siccum, generatio, corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum, materia, forma, et id genus, sed omnes phantasticae et male terminatae."
Their sterile heads take naturally to the path of negation; so they begin to deny truths that have long been admitted the vital power, for example, the sympathetic nervous system, generatio equivoca, Bichat's distinction between the working of the passions and the working of intelligence; or else they want us to return to crass atomism, and the like.
This inexplicability would still exist, if what is quite improbable should happen, namely, that the experimental attempts at artificially producing organic life should be successful, and if thus the question as to the generatio æquivoca, which during the past decades so much alarmed the minds of scientists and theologians, should be experimentally solved and answered in the affirmative.
They bring this quickly about by beginning a paradox; the sterility of their own heads suggests their taking the path of negation; and truths that have long been recognised are now denied for instance, the vital power, the sympathetic nervous system, generatio equivoca, Bichat's distinction between the working of the passions and the working of intelligence, or they return to crass atomism, etc., etc.
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