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By his investigations upon the lower animals he attempted to confirm the theory that since the creation of genus every individual is derived from a preceding individual the existing theory of preformation, in which he believed, and which taught that "every individual is fully and completely preformed in the germ, simply growing from microscopic to visible proportions, without developing any new parts."
But a preformation in some sense or other there must be;—some peculiar material predisposition of the germ, which, as such, supplies the directing principle for the development, and the sufficient reason for the repetition of the parental form. This is of such obvious importance from the mechanical point of view that the speculations of to-day tend to move along the old preformationist lines.
Moreover, as the formation of organic animate bodies appears explicable in the order of nature only when one assumes a preformation already organic, I have thence inferred that what we call generation of an animal is only a transformation and augmentation.
The foetus forms itself in the animal, and a thousand other wonders of nature are produced by a certain instinct that God has placed there, that is by virtue of divine preformation, which has made these admirable automata, adapted to produce mechanically such beautiful effects.
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