Note 326 — Chapter VIII

[If this new handiwork of man, so charmingly arranged by our author, is not more successful than Pandora, as made by Vulcan, we fear the world will not gain much by it. In the olden times, the man who propounded such curious ideas would probably have had a punishment awarded him, something similar to that suffered by Prometheus. Does M. Pouchet, in quoting this personage, entirely forget the rest of the tale, and the consequences of his rashness? We are really sorry, however, to see science perverted to a pet idea, if we may use the expression, and twisted by means of “bad anatomy and worse theology,” as a friend of ours calls it, for the sake of proving facts quite impossible to be solved. M. Pouchet gives us, in spontaneous generation, a first germ with which to start a primordial anatomical element, as he calls it. He starts with this, and argues—in what manner we leave it to our readers to determine—that, from this germ there have, in time, sprung all the animals on the surface of the globe. But he does not tell us how this first germ itself arose. That is put entirely on one side, and taken for granted. We cannot take it for granted however; and until we have it satisfactorily proved that he is right in any part of his idea, we shall go on thinking and believing as we have done before.—Editor.]