60 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 



ern England and the shieling of the Highland crofter 

 are the survivals of the one-roomed hut of Primitive 

 Man, scarcely changed in any essential with the lapse 

 of years. In the squire's mansion also, and the noble- 

 man's castle, we have the representatives, but now in 

 an immensely developed form, of the many-roomed 

 home of the chief. The steps by which the cottage 

 became the castle are the same as those by which the 

 cave in the rocks became the lodge of the chief. 

 Both processes wear the hall-mark of all true devel- 

 opment — they arise in response to growing necessi- 

 ties, and they are carried out by the most simple and 

 natural steps. 



In this evolution of a human habitation we have an 

 almost perfect type of the evolution of that more 

 august habitation, the complex tenement of clay in 

 which Man's mysterious being has its home. The 

 Body of Man is a structure of a million, or a million 

 million cells. And the history of the unborn babe is, 

 in the first instance, a history of additions, of room 

 being added to room, of organ to organ, of faculty to 

 faculty. The general process, also, by which this 

 takes place is almost as clear to modern science as in 

 the case of material buildings. A special class of ob- 

 servers has carefully watched these secret and amaz- 

 ing metamorphoses, and so wonderful has been their 

 success with mind and microscope that they can al- 

 most claim to have seen Man's Body made. The Sci- 

 ence of Embryology undertakes to trace the develop- 

 ment of Man from a stage in which he lived in a one- 

 roomed house — a physiological cell. Whatever the 

 multitude of rooms, the millions and millions of cells, 

 in which to-day each adult carries on the varied work 



