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iii 



METAMORPHOSIS IN MAN 



Before birth the head grows proportionately more than any other part. After birth 

 the legs grow most and the head least. Many other changes in proportion take 

 place in all parts of the body 



vidual becomes is already formed in advance, but too small for us to see. 

 When Leeuwenhoek and others introduced the microscope, many rushed to 

 examine the earliest stages of various plants and animals. Some of these 

 searchers found what they were looking for. They could see the outlines of 

 a fish or a frog by looking through the microscope at the egg of a fish or 

 a frog. Others could see the outlines of an animal by looking through the 

 microscope at the sperm. 



With what they had thought out in advance and what they thought they 

 could see through the microscope, many actually drew pictures of tiny ani- 

 mals, and even of a tiny human form— a "homunculus", or minute human 

 being, preformed and destined in good time to develop into a person. How- 

 ever reasonable this idea of preformation may seem, it raises special difficul- 

 ties. It suggests, for example, that in the "homunculus" there are already 

 present the germ cells, or "seeds", each with its own preformed individual; 

 and that these tinier individuals in turn have inside themselves the seeds for 

 the next generation, each with its still tinier individual, and so on to the end 

 of time. And if that is really the case, then we should have to assume that that 

 condition existed from the very beginning — so that, as some writer put it, 



347 



