How inscrutable and incomprehensible are the hidden works of Nature!

How little do we discover in comparison of those things which now are and forever will be hidden from our sight? The whole of which I am fully persuaded no one will ever be able to dive into, and to explain their causes and effects.

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.

Just as the supposed number may differ from the true number by fully 100, 150, or even 200 in a flock of 600 sheep, so may I be even more out of my reckoning in the case of these very little animalcules.

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.