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Though Linnaeus had already expressed this great truth in the sentence so often quoted, "Omne vivum ex ovo," yet he was not himself aware of the significance of his own statement, for the existence of the Mammalian egg was not then dreamed of.
"Omne vivum ex vivo," "no life without antecedent life," aphoristically sums up Redi's doctrine; but he went no further.
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.
Harvey shared the belief of Aristotle whose writings he so often quotes and of whom he speaks as his precursor and model, with the generous respect with which one genuine worker should regard another that such germs may arise by a process of "equivocal generation" out of not-living matter; and the aphorism so commonly ascribed to him, "omne vivum ex ovo" and which is indeed a fair summary of his reiterated assertions, though incessantly employed against the modern advocates of spontaneous generation, can be honestly so used only by those who have never read a score of pages of the "Exercitationes."
In the immense majority of both plants and animals, it is certain that the germ is not merely a body in which life is dormant or potential, but that it is itself simply a detached portion of the substance of a pre-existing living body; and the evidence has yet to be adduced which will satisfy any cautious reasoner that "omne vivum ex vivo" is not as well-established a law of the existing course of nature as "omne vivum ex ovo."
On the egg is written Ex ovo omnia, a legend since transmuted to the epigram Omne vivum ex ovo. The legend illustrates Harvey's principal theme, repeated constantly throughout the text, "that all animals were in some sort produced from eggs." If Harvey made no contribution beyond emphasizing the origin of animals from eggs, he would deserve a prominent place in the history of embryology.
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