CAUSE OP EVOLUTION 387 



cell. He also must act in accordance with the knowledge 

 accumulated in the past ages. 



Although Mr. Drummond does not see life in the same 

 light that I do I shall quote his impressions of the situa- 

 tion : "Now all these complicated contrivances, bones, 

 muscles, nerves, heart, brain, lungs are made out of cells. 

 They are themselves in their furthest development simply 

 masses of centers of cells modified in various ways for 

 the special department of household work. They are 

 meant to serve. No new thing has entered into the em- 

 bryo since its first appearance except building material. 

 It seized whatever matter lay at hand, incorporated it 

 with its own quickening substance and built it into its 

 appropriate place, so the structure rose in size to the 

 stature of man. The immense distance man has come 

 between the early cell and the infant's formed body, the 

 evolutionist sees concentrated into these few months, 

 representing the labor and progress of ages. Here before 

 him is the whole stretch of time since life first dawned 

 upon earth. The human form does not begin as a human 

 form, it begins as an animal. At first there is nothing 

 wearing the remotest semblance of humanity ; what meets 

 the eye is the vast procession of lower forms of life. To- 

 day in the embryo of still living things, we find again a 

 resurrection and life in the frame of man himself. The 

 proposition is not only that man begins his earthly ex- 

 istence in the guise of a lower animal-embryo, but that in 

 the successive transformations of the human embryo 

 there is produced before our eyes a visible, actual, physi- 

 cal representation of part of the life history of the world." 



This description of the situation by Mr. Drummond is 

 both very good and instructive. It shows how the cells 

 in the course of construction of the human being are 

 compelled to follow in their path of past experiences. 



