52 THE EGG IS THE FIRST STAGE 



And so I might go on upwards, from one kind of creature to 

 another, showing point by point the gradual increase in the com- 

 plication of animal organization, until I arrived at the highest 

 forms, even at Man himself, who, of all animals, departs most 

 from that degree of simplicity which we find in the egg. But 

 it will be more proper to trace these gradations, in full, in another 

 part of my subject. It does not necessarily follow here, from what 

 I have said, that there is a serial relation from the lowest to the 

 highest animals ; that is another thing. I simply mean to assert 

 that the various degrees of complication are not suddenly 

 marked off, with gaps between them, but that the idea of differ- 

 entiation has been carried out gradually. My present object is 

 merely to impress upon your minds the fact that there is no sud- 

 den transition from the condition of an egg- to that of an animal, 

 taken in its usual sense. 



Being thus preoccupied with the idea that there are animals 

 (Amojba, Actinophrys, etc.) as simple as some eggs, or even 

 more simple than others, you are prepared for the assertion that 

 an egg is not to be looked upon as a distinct body, which preex- 

 ists the animal, but rather that it is the animal itself, from the 

 moment when it begins to form in the ovary of its parent. The 

 egg is merely the first stage of growth of an animal, and it is not 

 separated from the succeeding phases, any more than these latter 

 are from each other. 



From this, and what has already been told you preceding this, 

 you may draw the inference that there is a perfect parallelism 

 between the development of an animal from the earliest or egg- 

 stage to the adult, and the successive degrees of grade from the 

 lowest to the highest animals, within a group. 



Now, in regard to the point of origin of the egg, the fact that 

 it is formed within a parent rather than in the outer world is per- 

 haps only a difference of degree ; for although some eggs are re- 

 tained by the parent until after the egg-stage is passed, in fact 

 until the time when the young is able to move about and take 

 care of itself when born, as in our common quadrupeds, yet 

 even here there is a marked difference among the successively 



