Page 196 - Portents and Features of the Mahdi's Comingl

PORTENTS AND FEATURES OF THE MAHDI'S COMING

a claim, how e ver, is incon sist ent with the most unas -
sail a ble rules of biol o gy.

"Life Comes From Life"
In his book, Darwin never referred to the ori gin of life.
The prim i tive under stand ing of sci ence in his time rest -
ed on the assump tion that liv ing beings had a very sim -
ple struc ture. Since medi e val times, spon ta ne ous gen -
er a tion, which asserts that non-liv ing mate ri als came
togeth er to form liv ing organ isms, had been wide ly
accept ed. It was com mon ly believed that insects came
into being from food left o vers, and mice from wheat.
Interesting exper i ments were con duct ed to prove this
the o ry. Some wheat was placed on a dirty piece of
cloth, and it was believed that mice would orig i nate
from it after a while.
Similarly, mag gots devel op ing in rot ting meat was
assumed to be evi dence of spon ta ne ous gen er a tion.
However, it was later under stood that worms did not
appear on meat spon ta ne ous ly, but were car ried there
by flies in the form of lar vae, invis i ble to the naked eye.
Even when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, the
belief that bac te ria could come into exis tence from non-
liv ing mat ter was wide ly accept ed in the world of sci -
ence.
However, five years after the pub li ca tion of Darwin's
book, Louis Pasteur announced his results after long

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