Page 90 - The Struggle of the Messengers

88 The Struggle of the Messengers

claim, however, is inconsistent with the most unassailable rules of
biology.

"Life Comes From Life"

In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The
primitive understanding of science in his time rested on the
assumption that living beings had a very simple structure. Since
medieval times, spontaneous generation, which asserts that non-
living materials came together to form living organisms, had been
widely accepted. It was commonly believed that insects came into
being from food leftovers, and mice from wheat. Interesting
experiments were conducted to prove this theory. Some wheat was

placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it was believed that mice
would originate from it after a while.
Similarly, maggots developing in rotting meat was assumed to
be evidence of spontaneous generation. However, it was later
understood that worms did not appear on meat spontaneously,
but were carried there by flies in the form of larvae, invisible to
the naked eye.
Even when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, the belief that

bacteria could come into existence from non-living matter was
widely accepted in the world of science.
However, five years after the publication of Darwin's book,
Louis Pasteur announced his results after long studies and
experiments, that disproved spontaneous generation, a
cornerstone of Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at the
Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said: "Never will the doctrine of
spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by
this simple experiment." 1