74 THE RELATIONS OF MAN 



honoured theories and strongly-rooted prejudices regard- 

 ing his own position in nature, and his relations to the 

 nnder-world of life ; while that which remains a dim sus- 

 picion for the unthinking, becomes a vast argument, 

 fraught with the deepest consequences, for all who are 

 acquainted with the recent progress of the anatomical and 

 physiological sciences. 



I now propose briefly to unfold that argument, and to 

 set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no 

 special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief 

 facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and 

 the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute 

 world must be based : I shall then indicate the one imme- 

 diate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by 

 those facts, and I shall finally discuss the bearing of that 

 , conclusion upon the hypotheses which have been enter- 

 tained respecting the Origin of Man. 



The facts to which I would first direct the reader's 

 attention, though ignored by many of the professed in- 

 structors of the public mind, are easy of demonstration 

 and are universally agreed to by men of science ; while 

 their significance is so great, that whoso has duly pon- 

 dered over them will, I think, find little to startle him in 

 the other revelations of Biology. I refer to those facts 

 which have been made known by the study of Develop- 

 ment. 



It is a truth of very wide, if not of universal, applica- 

 tion, that every living creature commences its existence 

 under a form different from, and simpler than, that which 

 it eventually attains. 



The oak is a more complex thing than the little rudi- 

 mentary plant contained in the acorn ; the caterpillar is 

 more complex than the egg ; the butterfly than the cater- 



