The partisans of spontaneous generation wished nevertheless to go through the entire series of their experiments. In vain the Commission tried to persuade them that this would make the judgment as long as the discussion itself had been, that all bore upon one fact, and that this fact could be decided by a single experiment. The heterogenists would not listen to this. M. Pouchet and M. Joly withdrew from the contest. M. Jamin, an exact and authorised historian of these debates, observed that 'the heterogenists, however they may have covered their retreat, were thereby self-condemned. If they had been sure of the fact--which they were solemnly engaged to prove, under penalty of acknowledging themselves defeated--they would have hastened to demonstrate it, for it would have been the triumph of their doctrine. People do not allow themselves to be condemned by default except in causes in which they have no confidence.' _STUDIES ON WINE._ Having thus solved the problem of spontaneous generation, a problem which was but a parenthesis forced upon his attention, Pasteur returned to fermentation. Guided by his studies on vinegar and other observations of detail, he undertook an inquiry into the diseases of wine. The explanations of the changes which wine was known to undergo rested only on hypothesis. From the time of Chaptal, who was followed by Liebig and Berzelius, all the world believed wine to be a liquid in which the various constituents react upon each other mutually and slowly. The wine was thought to be continually 'working.' When the fermentation of the grape is finished, equilibrium is not quite established between the diverse elements of the liquor. Time is needed for them to blend together. If this reciprocal action be not regular, the wine becomes bad. This was, in other words, the doctrine of spontaneity. Without support from carefully reasoned experiments, these explanations could not satisfy Pasteur, especially at a moment when he had just been proving that there was nothing spontaneous either in the phenomena of fermentation or in animal and vegetable infusions.