162 THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



haps more marked in women than in men. A welcome 

 fact is the lengthening of life that is going on in our 

 midst ; thus the span of life in England seems to have 

 increased by about a third since 1865. Still more wel- 

 come is a lengthening of youth and of full strength. 

 But we must look for even more — the improvement of 

 the health-rate and the raising of the standard of 

 health. 



§ 2. The Ante-Natal Life 



The first chapter in the life-cycle is that before birth 

 — the ante-natal life. It is the time of early develop- 

 ment, when the egg-cell divides and differentiates 

 to form an embryo, when this pinhead-like germ grows 

 — at first with amazing rapidity — into a creature thou- 

 sands of times bigger and millions of miUions of times 

 heavier than itself. It is the time when out of seeming 

 silnplicity there is coined and minted obvious com- 

 plexity, when out of invisible intricacy there arises a 

 visible manifoldness. It is the time to which the 

 Psalmist reverently refers (Ps. cxxxix. 15-16) : — " Thine 

 eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect; and 

 in thy book all my members were written, which in 

 continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was 

 none of them." 



From a general biological point of view three ideas 

 stand out clearly, (a) One of the evolutionists before 

 Darwin was Robert Chambers, anonjonous author of 

 The Vestiges of Creation, and, along with his brother, 

 founder of the well-known publishing house of Cham- 



