THE BODY OF MAN. 28; 



formation of the bodily substratum extending beyond 

 the limits of mere variability. Even on the assumj)- 

 tion that the mind forms its own organ, the brain, 

 the specific idea of man would necessarily have con- 

 sisted in bodily improvement, as contrasted with the 

 supposed rigidity of the animal organism. For, in 

 principle, it is the same whether changes take place 

 perceptibly in arms and legs, or imperceptibly to the 

 eye, in the molecules of the brain. We are, therefore, 

 only retrieving the shortcomings of philosophy when 

 we attribute to the bodily mutability of man the exten- 

 sion which accrues to it from the applicability of the 

 doctrine of Descent to the particular case. 



The bodily accordance betwixt man and animal leaves 

 the doctrine of Descent so little to desire, that the ap- 

 prehension of Mephistopheles lest grovelling humanity 

 should finally be alarmed at his likeness to the Deity, 

 might far rather be applied to his likeness to the animal. 

 The human body, like the body of every animal, points 

 in its evolution to an elaboration from the undifferen- 

 tiated to the specialized form. The general distribution 

 of the body and the development of the several organs 

 is common to man and all mammals, and in the earlier 

 stages of the embryonic state to all vertebrate animals, 

 and indicates this general kinship. The existence there- 

 fore of a discoidal placenta (unless we prefer a special 

 reiterated new creation of this organ of development, in 

 which the Creator adhered to the pattern of the placenta 

 of the lemurs, rodents, insectivora, bats, and apes) reduces 

 us to the alternative that in the natural and to us unknown 

 development of man, chance, or some quite different 

 chain of causes, led in this case, as in the other, to the 



