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while reptiles and fishes, on the contrary, have a 

 single heart, with which numerous large arched 

 vessels are directly continuous ; but man himself 

 and, a fortiori, quadrupeds and birds had at 

 one stage of developement, as single a heart, 

 and as many arched vessels connected with it, 

 as the most insignificant reptile or fish, which 

 still furnishes them with their model. Further, 

 man has a highly complicated brain, while the 

 lower animals, on the contrary, have a brain 

 more and more simple, the farther they are from 

 the perfection of his organization ; but the 

 nucleus, as it were, of the brain of man and of 

 that of a fish, is still found to have been cast in 

 the same mould. What then is man, with his 

 fins, and his gills, and his air-bladder, his single 

 heart and branchial arches, and his undeveloped 

 brain, but a kind of fish better appointed in- 

 deed but still truly and fundamentally, as far 

 as the essential structure of his organs is con- 

 cerned, a kind of fish nay, what is a fish, in all 

 probability, but a better appointed zoophyte so 

 that man, proud man, has, in the distinctness 

 and splendour of his organization, really nothing 

 but what a polype has in confusion and obscuri- 

 ty ! The invisible germs of all animals are per- 

 haps essentially the same ; and even the visible 

 embryos of the most opposite tribes are often 

 quite indistinguishable from each other. The 

 foundation stones of all, if we may so express it, 

 are of the self-same number and form ; and upon 

 each of these is reared a superstructure, always 



