VALUE OF EMBRYONIC FORMS. 507 



consider it in the lowest or the highest cases, belonging either to the veg- 

 etable or the animal kingdom. It is a process of repetition or reproduc- 

 tion, cell arising from cell. And here at once we may correct the lan- 

 guage so often used indeed, which we have ourselves just used in this 

 respect, for such terms as high and low are only to be employed in a very 

 restricted sense. The evolving cell gives rise to other- cells, but for a pe- 

 riod of time no indication is presented as to which of the two kingdoms 

 it is to belong, animal or plant. By degrees, as the develop- Development 

 ment goes on, that point is determined, and so, one after an- is attended by 

 other, the unfolding mass gradually reveals the class, order, evolving of pe- 

 family, genus, species, and, finally, its sex and individual pe- culiarities - 

 culiarities. In all this there is an evolving of the special out of the gen- 

 eral ; one after another, peculiarities, which are more and more minute, 

 arise ; and thus we are not to regard the progress of development as tak- 

 ing place from the lower to the higher, forms that are more and more com- 

 plex arising in succession, but we are to regard it as the gradual unfold- 

 ing of the special from the general. 



This career of development applies equally to the case of any individ- 

 ual animal, or any race of animals. Thus man himself, in Analogy of de- 

 succession, passes through a great variety of forms, from the ^faSSidual 

 condition of a simple cell; these forms merging by degrees andin the race, 

 into one another, the form of tlie serpent, of the fish, of the bird, and this 

 not only as regards the entire system in the aggregate, but also as re- 

 gards each one of its constituent mechanisms the nervous system, the 

 circulatory, the digestive. Now, on the passage onward, these forms are 

 to be regarded, as has been well expressed, each one as the scaffolding 

 by which the next is built ; and just as man, in his embryonic transit, 

 presents these successive aspects on the small scale, so does the entire 

 animal series present them in the world on the great scale. Kaces of 

 animals are not to be compared as though they were more perfect or low- 

 er than one another, but as having advanced more or less in the direction 

 from the general to the special ; and therefore, in this philosophical view, 

 we are justified in regarding those animated forms which heretofore have 

 been spoken of as lower in the animal scale as being, in reality, the em- 

 bryos of those that are higher ; and this should lead us to a juster esti- 

 mate of their relation of value toward one another, since we are very apt 

 to contrast them in that respect. In the case of an individ- Value of em- 

 ual, as in man, we put at once a true interpretation on the kryonic forms, 

 value of the various transitory conditions through which he has passed, 

 estimating these as of but little intrinsic importance; as being, as it were, 

 no more than links in a chain ; and this may teach us a more just appre- 

 ciation of the relations of animal races to one another and to the human 

 species. It may teach us the folly of comparing, as some have endeav- 



