Abstract
UNTIL one hundred years ago the origin of living organisms was not a major problem in biology. Apart from the biblical creation, the view was frequently held that many at least of the simpler organisms were produced by spontaneous generation. The ease with which this idea was accepted was partly due to imperfect observation and partly to the view that there was a completely graded sequence between the living and the non–living. This found its most complete expression in the detailed ‘scale of beings’ of the eighteenth century. The disproof of individual cases of abiogenesis did not change this attitude until Pasteur showed that every supposed case of spontaneous generation was, in fact, due to infection by living organisms.
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