Excited, Spallanzani called his brother Nicolo, and his sister, and told them his pretty experiment. And then, bright-eyed, he told his students that life only comes from life; every living thing has to have a parent--even these wretched little animals! Seal your soup flasks in a flame, and nothing can get into them from outside. Heat them long enough, and everything, even those tough beasts that can stand boiling, will be killed. Do that, and you’ll never find any living animals arising in any kind of soup--you could keep it till doomsday. Then he threw his work at Needham’s head in a brilliant sarcastic paper, and the world of science was thrown into an uproar. Could Needham really be wrong? asked thoughtful men, gathered in groups under the high lamps and candles of the scientific societies of London and Copenhagen, of Paris and Berlin. The argument between Spallanzani and Needham didn’t stay in the academies among the highbrows. It leaked out through heavy doors onto the streets and crept into stylish drawing-rooms. The world would have liked to believe Needham, for the people of the eighteenth century were cynical and gay; everywhere men were laughing at religion and denying any supreme power in nature, and they delighted in the notion that life could arise haphazardly. But Spallanzani’s experiments were so clear and so hard to answer, even with the cleverest words.... Meanwhile the good Needham had not been resting on his oars exactly; he was an expert at publicity, and to help his cause along he went to Paris and lectured about his mutton gravy, and in Paris he fell in with the famous Count Buffon. This count was rich; he was handsome; he loved to write about science; he believed he could make up hard facts in his head; he was rather too well dressed to do experiments. Besides he really knew some mathematics, and had translated Newton into French. When you consider that he could juggle most complicated figures, that he was a rich nobleman as well, you will agree that he certainly ought to know--without experimenting--whether little animals could come to life without fathers or mothers! So argued the godless wits of Paris. Needham and Buffon got on famously. Buffon wore purple clothes and lace cuffs that he didn’t like to muss up on dirty laboratory tables, with their dust and cluttered glassware and pools of soup spilled from accidentally broken flasks. So he did the thinking and writing, while Needham messed with the experiments. These two men then set about to invent a great theory of how life arises, a fine philosophy that every one could understand, that would suit devout Christians as well as witty atheists. The theory ignored Spallanzani’s cold facts, but what would you have? It came from the brain of the great Buffon, and that was enough to upset any fact, no matter how hard, no matter how exactly recorded.