296 THE HISTORY OF CREATIOiN'. 



As the object of these pages is solely to further the 

 general knowledge of natural truths, and to spread, in wider 

 circles, a natural conception of the relations of man to the 

 rest of nature, I shall be justified if I do not pay any 

 regard to the widely-spread prejudice in favour of an ex- 

 ceptional and privileged position for man in creation, and 

 simply give here the embryological facts from which the 

 reader will be able to draw conclusions affirming the 

 groundlessness of those prejudices. I wish all the more 

 to entreat him to reflect carefully upon these facts of on- 

 togeny, as it is my firm conviction that a general knowledge 

 of them can only promote the intellectual advance, and 

 thereby the mental perfecting, of the human race. 



Amidst all the infinitely rich and interesting material 

 which lies before us in the ontoo-env of vertebrate animals, 

 that is, in the history of their individual development, I shall 

 here confine myself to showing some of those facts which 

 are of the greatest importance to the Theory of Descent in 

 general, as well as in its special application to man. Man 

 is at the beginning of his individual existence a simple egg, 

 a single little cell, just the same as every animal organism 

 which originates by sexual generation. The human egg is 

 essentially the same as that of all other mammals, and can- 

 not be distino'uished from the e^^ of the hio'her mammals. 

 The egg represented in Fig. 5 might be that of a man or an 

 ape as well as of a dog, a horse, or any other mammal Not 

 only the form and structure, but even the size of the egg in 

 most mammals is the same as in man, namely, about the 

 120th part of an inch in diameter, so that the egg under 

 favorable circumstances, with the naked eye, can just be 

 I erceived as a small speck. The difterences which really 



