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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"The Poet at the Breakfast-Table"

" If it should prove that dead things come to life
of themselves, it would be awkward, you know, because then somebody will
get up and say if one dead thing made itself alive another might, and so
perhaps the earth peopled itself without any help. Possibly the
difficulty wouldn't be so great as many people suppose. We might perhaps
find room for a Creator after all, as we do now, though we see a little
brown seed grow till it sucks up the juices of half an acre of ground,
apparently all by its own inherent power. That does not stagger us; I am
not sure that it would if Mr. Crosses or Mr. Weekes's acarus should show
himself all of a sudden, as they said he did, in certain mineral mixtures
acted on by electricity.
The Landlady was off soundings, and looking vacant enough by this time.
The Master turned to me.---Don't think too much of the result of our one
experiment. It means something, because it confirms those other
experiments of which it was a copy; but we must remember that a hundred
negatives don't settle such a question. Life does get into the world
somehow. You don't suppose Adam had the cutaneous unpleasantness
politely called psora, do you?
--Hardly,--I answered.---He must have been a walking hospital if he
carried all the maladies about him which have plagued his descendants.


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