The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann betrays in this ingenious distinction between "systematic and natural species" is also found in his philosophic "Thoughts on Evolution" (chap. viii.), his distinction between philosophic and scientific evolution, or between evolution in one stem and in several stems. His remarks (in chap. vii.) on "the cell and spontaneous generation" are similarly marred by sophistry. The question of spontaneous generation or archigony--that is to say, of the first appearance of organic life on the earth, is one of the most difficult problems in biology, one of those in which the most distinguished students betray a striking weakness of judgment. Dr. Heinrich Schmidt, of Jena, has lately written an able and popular little work on that subject. In his _Spontaneous Generation and Professor Reinke_ (1903), he has shown to what absurd consequences the ecclesiastical ideas lead on this very question. The botanist Reinke, of Kiel, is now regarded amongst religious people as the chief opponent of Darwinism; for many conservatives this is because he is a member of the Prussian Herrenhaus (a very intelligent body, of course!). Although he is a strong evangelical, many of his mystic deductions agree surprisingly with the Catholic speculations of Father Wasmann. This is especially the case with regard to spontaneous generation. They both declare that the first appearance of life must be traced to a miracle, to the work of a personal deity, whom Reinke calls the "cosmic intelligence." I have shown the unscientific character of these notions in my last two works, _The Riddle of the Universe_, and _The Wonders of Life_. I have drawn attention especially to the widely distributed monera of the chromacea class--organisms of the simplest type conceivable, whose whole body is merely an unnucleated, green, structureless globule of plasm (Chroococcus); their whole vital activity consists of growth (by forming plasm) and multiplication (by dividing into two). There is little theoretical difficulty in conceiving the origin of these new simple monera from inorganic compounds of albumen, or their later transformation into the simplest nucleated cells. All this, and a good deal more that will not fit in his Jesuitical frame, is shrewdly ignored by Wasmann.