232 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



each special cell, the product of one preceding 

 it, whether epithelial, muscular, or conjunctive, 

 must always reproduce the same cellular type, 

 or, in default, one of the ancestral forms, or one to 

 correspond with one of the forms of its embryonic 

 period. 



According to that, when a tumour, an epithelioma 

 for instance, develops in an individual, the cellular 

 elements of which the said tumour is composed 

 will reproduce one of the ancestral or embryonic 

 forms that have preceded the development and 

 formation of the epithelial tissue. Thus regarded, 

 a tumour is the degeneration of an element peculiar 

 to the tissue, but in a state of retrogression and 

 monstrous growth. 



Making use of Pascal's simile, who compares 

 humanity, considered as a great unity, to a man 

 who is always learning, the closeness of the analogy 

 will appear still more striking on comparing indivi- 

 dual men in the social structure with what are cells 

 in the structure of animal tissue, and one infers 

 that the unities, man, during the whole of present 

 history constitute a real serial degeneracy. Men 

 are still forms of disease, and in different stages of 

 ancestral retrogression ; but by no means the normal 

 type man. 



Neither man as an individual, nor man in the 

 vast conception of Pascal, will free himself from his 



