THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 85 



earth is not dead. It is risen. It exists to-day in 

 the embryos of still-living things, and some of the 

 most archaic types find again a resurrection and a 

 life in the frame of man himself 



It is an amazing and almost incredible story. 

 The proposition is not only that Man begins his 

 earthly existence in the guise of a lower animal- 

 embryo, but that in the successive transformations 

 of the human embryo there is reproduced before 

 our eyes a visible, actual, physical representation of 

 part of the life-history of the world. Human Em- 

 bryology is a condensed account, a recapitulation 

 or epitome of some of the main chapters in the 

 Natural History of the world. The same processes 

 of development which once took thousands of years 

 for their consummation are here condensed, fore- 

 shortened, concentrated into the space of weeks. 

 Each platform reached by the human embryo in its 

 upward course represents the embryo of some lower 

 animal which in some mysterious way has played 

 a part in the pedigree of the human race, which 

 may itself have disappeared long since from the 

 earth, but is now and for ever built into the inmost 

 being of Man. These lower animals, each at its 

 successive stage, have stopped short in their de- 

 velopment ; Man has gone on. At each fresh 

 advance his embryo is found again abreast of some 



