"No, no; I admit nothing of the sort," cried Wingfold. "I only admit that the evidence seems in favor of believing that in some liquids that have been heated to a high point, and kept from the air, life has yet appeared. How can I tell whether _all_ life already there was first destroyed? whether a yet higher temperature would not have destroyed yet more life? What if the heat, presumed to destroy all known germs of life in them, should be the means of developing other germs, further removed? Then as to _spontaneity_, as to life appearing of itself, that question involves something beyond physics. Absolute life can exist only of and by itself, else were it no perfect thing; but will you say that a mass of protoplasm--that _proto_ by the way is a begged question--exists by its own power, appears by its own will? Is it not rather there because it can not help it?" "It is there in virtue of the life that is in it," said Faber. "Of course; that is a mere truism," returned Wingfold, "equivalent to, It lives in virtue of life. There is nothing _spontaneous_ in that. Its life must in some way spring from the true, the original, the self-existent life." "There you are begging the whole question," objected the doctor. "No; not the whole," persisted the curate; "for I fancy you will yourself admit there is some blind driving law behind the phenomenon. But now I will beg the whole question, if you like to say so, for the sake of a bit of purely metaphysical argument: the law of life behind, if it be spontaneously existent, can not be a blind, deaf, unconscious law; if it be unconscious of itself, it can not be spontaneous; whatever is of itself must be God, and the source of all non-spontaneous, that is, all other existence." "Then it has been only a dispute about a word?" said Faber. "Yes, but a word involving a tremendous question," answered Wingfold. "Which I give up altogether," said the doctor, "asserting that there is _nothing_ spontaneous, in the sense you give the word--the original sense I admit. From all eternity a blind, unconscious law has been at work, producing." "I say, an awful living Love and Truth and Right, creating children of its own," said the curate--"and there is our difference." "Yes," assented Faber. "Anyhow, then," said Wingfold, "so far as regards the matter in hand, all we can say is, that under such and such circumstances life _appears--whence_, we believe differently; _how_, neither of us can tell--perhaps will ever be able to tell. I can't talk in scientific phrase like you, Faber, but truth is not tied to any form of words." "It is well disputed," said the doctor, "and I am inclined to grant that the question with which we started does not immediately concern the great differences between us."