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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



in the highest types, the mind casts about to see 

 if there be no similar forms of living creatures in 

 which the structural problems are simpler. As 

 man does not stand alone, but is merely — in re- 

 spect of his lower nature — one of a large series 

 of living forms, something, surely, may be learned 

 of him, collaterally, and from below, by seeking 

 what may be seen in the types that come nearest 

 to him. Feeling our way down among the branch- 

 es of the great vertebrate life-tree, we come to 

 forms somewhat simpler, indeed, but formed on 

 the whole on the same pattern, and having on the 

 whole the same mode of embryogeny, and no real 

 break occurs, even among living types, until we 

 have passed the lamprey and his companions. 

 Searching downward, however, from any culmi- 

 nating type of mammal, we shall come to no form 

 directly underlying them until we are among 

 aquatic creatures ; the birds, lying over the rep- 

 tiles, belong to another " leader" in the life-tree. 



Do but consider what a manufactory, what a 

 laboratory, what a temple (if I may so speak) the 

 head is ! Yet it and all the body, of which it is 

 the chief part, is developed vegetatively — its 

 growth is as the growth of a plant, but its archi- 

 tecture stains the pride of all the glory of human 

 skill. Man, not structurally only, but socially, 

 also, is both husbandry and a building. And as 

 the forces that bind the units of society together 

 are the same as those that perfect the individual 

 as such, so, also, is it in that which enclothes 

 man and brings him into conscious relation to his 

 fellows. The forces that work in the elementary 

 parts are the same as those that work in the 

 whole to make it one whole. The body is com- 

 pacted together by that which every cell, every 

 tissue, and every organ supplies ; " according to 

 the effectual working in the measure of every 

 part" does it live, grow, and build up itself, and 

 perform its wondrous and inimitable functions. 



For a century past the thinking mind has 

 been gradually trained to consider the earth, 

 which is our temporary home, as a development, 

 as being in a state now very different from that 

 which it had at first, as having undergone, not 

 one, but a thousand changes. Every one, now, 

 knows that the earth did not " rise like an ex- 

 halation," and immediately assume its present 

 form, wear its present robes, carry its present 

 living forms ; but that, during aeonian days — im- 

 measurable secular periods — the face of the earth 

 has changed as much as the face of a man changes 



during the " seven ages of his eventful history." 

 It will take some time to bring the mind face to 

 face with our facts ; the thinkers as well as the 

 unthinking will be slow in parting with the old 

 cherished idea of the sudden apparition of a per- 

 fect man upon the earth, and the more because 

 this seems to be the teaching of the most vener- 

 able records of history ; which, indeed, ought to 

 be sacred to us, if for no other reason than their 

 undoubted antiquity. Those most venerable 

 records have not suffered now that we get a Pis- 

 gah-view of the earth's development ; they will 

 not suffer from any doctrine of the slow develop- 

 ment of man. 



I had to speak of the aims of morphology ; its 

 highest aims are to be able to read off the archaic 

 writings in which the members of man were in 

 olden times written ; to decipher the first promise 

 and prophecy of his organic life in its initial let- 

 ters up to the characters that express the form 

 of the jointed worm, and to see the form of the 

 jointed worm exalted into the fullness of the form 

 of man. Yet we know of nothing but the se- 

 quences and results of the morphological force ; 

 we know absolutely as much of the nature of the 

 human soul as of the nature of protoplasm, and 

 nothing of either. The morphologist, as such, 

 for the time, is like Gallio, he " careth for none 

 of these things ; " he refuses to be hindered with 

 side-questions, however grave and important ; 

 his motto is, " This one thing I do." His work is 

 to trace the germ into the adult or germ-grower ; 

 to scale every stage and step of a living creat- 

 ure's life ; to map out each form, passing into 

 succeeding forms, until the perfect form appears. 



The ladder of man's life reaches up to the 

 highest heaven of organic beauty ; that of the 

 horse, the ox, and the lion stops far short of this 

 height ; yet are they all perfect after their kind. 

 You will see at once that man is an animal plus 

 something that has made it possible for him to 

 become " in form and moving so express and ad- 

 mirable ; the beauty of the world, the paragon of 

 animals ! " Prof. Flower will show you what a 

 poor thing man is when that which makes him 

 man is arrested or suppressed; you will then 

 "look on this picture and on this," on man in 

 his highest development ; his outward form cor- 

 responding to the power and excellence within; 

 and on man undeveloped, brutal, foul in face, and 

 fouler still in life. 



— Nature. 



