We have neither space nor occasion to go further in this Chapter into the question of spontaneous generation. For this I must refer the reader to the fifteenth chapter of the _History of Creation,_ and especially to the second book of the _General Morphology,_ or to the essay on “The Monera and Spontaneous Generation” in my _Studies of the Monera and other Protists._[29] I have given there fully my own view of this important question. The famous botanist Nägeli afterwards (1884) developed the same ideas. I will only say a few words here about this obscure question of the origin of life, in so far as our main subject, organic evolution in general, is affected by it. Spontaneous generation, in the definite and restricted sense in which I maintain it, and claim that it is a necessary hypothesis in explaining the origin of life, refers solely to the evolution of the Monera from inorganic carbon-compounds. When living things made their first appearance on our planet, the very complex nitrogenous compound of carbon that we call _plasson,_ which is the earliest material embodiment of vital action, must have been formed in a purely chemical way from inorganic carbon-compounds. The first Monera were formed in the sea by spontaneous generation, as crystals are formed in the mother-water. Our demand for a knowledge of causes compels us to assume this. If we believe that the whole inorganic history of the earth has proceeded on mechanical principles without any intervention of a Creator, and that the history of life also has been determined by the same mechanical laws; if we see that there is no need to admit creative action to explain the origin of the various groups of organisms; it is utterly irrational to assume such creative action in dealing with the first appearance of organic life on the earth. [29] The English reader will find a luminous and up-to-date chapter on the subject in Haeckel’s recently written and translated _Wonders of Life._—Translator.