Pasteur that the occurrence of abiogenesis in the microscopic world was disproved as much as its occurrence in the macroscopic world.

The Bohemian historian, Palacky, fifty years ago thoroughly disproved this accusation, and, though it has recently been revived by German historians, it must undoubtedly be considered as a calumny.

But on account of experimental errors in weighing and measuring, and through loss of material in the transfer of substances from one vessel to another, such analyses are rarely trustworthy to more than one part in about Soo; so that small changes in weight consequent on the chemical change could not with certainty be proved or disproved.

Redi, had disproved by experiment the spontaneous generation of maggots from putrid flesh, and had shown that they can only develop from the eggs of flies.

Whatever be the historical worth of this story, it may safely be said that it cannot be disproved by deductive reasoning from the premisses of abstract logic. The most we can do is to assert that a universe in which such things are liable to happen on a large scale is unfitted for the practical application of the theory of cardinal numbers.