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SIMTLAMTY OF MANS AND DOGS EMBRYO. 295 



or •anwillingly, that tliese invaluable facts of human ontogeny 

 are, even at the present day, utterly unknown to most 

 people, or are in no way valued as they deserve to be. It is 

 in the face of such a condition of things as this that we see 

 clearly upon what a wrong and one-sided road the much 

 vaunted culture of the 19th century still moves. Ignorance 

 and superstition are the foundations upon which most men 

 construct their conception of their own organism and its rela- 

 tion to the totality of things ; and these palpable facts of 

 the history of development, which might throw the light 

 of truth upon them, are ignored. It is true these facts are 

 not calculated to excite approval among those who assume a 

 thorough difference between man and the rest of nature, and 

 who will not acknowledge the animal origin of the human 

 race. That origin must be a very unpleasant truth to 

 members of the ruling and privileged castes in those nations 

 among which there exists an hereditary division of social 

 classes, in consequence of false ideas about the laws of in- 

 heritance. It is well known that, even in our day, in many 

 civilized countries the idea of hereditary grades of rank 

 goes so far, that, for example, the aristocracy imagine them- 

 selves to be of a nature totally different from that of or- 

 dinary citizens, and nobles who commit a disgraceful 

 offence are punished by being expelled from the caste of 

 nobles, and thrust down among the pariahs of "vulgar 

 citizens." What are these nobles to think of the noble blood 

 which flows in their privileged veins, when they learn that 

 all human embryos, those of nobles as well as commoners, 

 during the first two months of development, are scarcely 

 distinguishable from the tailed embryos of dogs and other 

 mammals ? 



