For my part, I hold it equally impossible for a small shellfish to be produced without generation as for a whale to have its origin from the mud.
From Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
I have often endeavoured to view the circulation of the blood in terrestrial animals, but without success, by reason that no parts of their bodies were sufficiently transparent.
If we now plainly perceive that the passage of the blood from the arteries into the veins of the tadpole is not performed in any other than those vessels, which are so minute as only to admit the passage of a single globule at a time, we may conclude that the same is performed in like manner in our own bodies and in those of other animals.
People who look for the first time through a microscope say, 'Now I see this, and then I see that,' and even a skilled observer can be fooled. On these observations I have spent more time than many will believe, but I have done them with joy, and I have taken no notice of those who have said, 'Why take so much trouble,' and, 'What good is it?'
My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas, but I'll leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown plausible reasons which I can grasp.
When I have supped too heavily of an evening, I drink in the morning a large number of cups of coffee, and that as hot as I can drink it, so that the sweat breaks out on me, and if by so doing I can't restore my body, a whole apothecary's shop couldn't do much, and that is the only thing I have done for years when I have felt a fever.
Life lives on life - it is cruel, but it is God's will. And it is for our good, of course, because if there weren't little animals to eat up the young mussels, our canals would be choked by those shellfish, for each mother has more than a thousand young ones at a time!
I've never taught one, because if I taught one, I'd have to teach others... I would give myself over to a slavery, whereas I want to stay a free man.
For my part, I would say that the male sperm and seeds of plants have been penetrated so far that there is nothing further to discover in this great secret, but I could err in my opinion.
Man comes not from an egg but from an animalcule that is found in male sperm.
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