Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything which exists is referable to the _vis vitæ_--to non-corporeal, yet extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible, ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely numerous--is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm: everything that is, or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own spontaneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a germ, the totality of things." But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism" landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now. It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation in these directions.[22] Neither the lowest primordial cell, nor the least conceivable molecule, has yet been reached by the aid of the microscope, any more than the outermost circle of the heavens has been penetrated by the aid of the telescope. We must stop somewhere, and when we find a scientifically formulated statement which embraces all vital phenomena,