632 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



to disown all past connection with that great tree 

 of life, to which they are related as most precious 

 fruit. Pitiful, nay, laughable displays! What should 

 we think of the man who stoutly denied his intra- 

 uterine existence, who preferred to believe that he had 

 descended direct from the clouds (albeit fashioned after 

 the model of an ape), because in his childhood his nurse 

 had told him such a story? And yet a person so 

 credulous one who persisted in believing the story he 

 had first heard and in disbelieving all those who 

 were prepared to prove its untruth would appear to 

 many dispassionate onlookers to be not more unrea- 

 sonable than are those who try to disown all kinship 

 with the products of surrounding* nature, and prefer to 

 regard themselves as degenerated representatives of 

 some higher modes of being. 



The early history of the individual infant is hidden 

 from ordinary mortals, just as completely as the early 

 history of the race is buried in the womb of time. 

 But those who know the history of this intra-uterine 

 existence cannot but feel how strongly it testifies to 

 the real origin and affiliation of the race. These 

 stages of man's existence embody a condensed record 

 of some of the missing pages in the earth's history. 



So that to mistrust or ignore all the various kinds of 

 evidence which so plainly appeal to our reason, would 

 be to accustom ourselves to look upon nature as a living 

 lie^ and upon reason itself as a faculty destined only 

 to deceive! 



