THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 95 



Music ? And what Life and Death and Pain and 

 Struggle put all together in the noiseless workshop 

 of the past, and removed each worker silently when 

 its task was done ? How these things came to be, 

 Biology is one long record. The architects and 

 builders of this mighty temple are not anonymous. 

 Their names, and the work they did, are graven 

 forever on the walls and arches of the Human 

 Embryo. For this is a volume of that Book in 

 which Man's members were written, which in con- 

 tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there was 

 none of them. 



The Descent of Man from the Animal Kingdom 

 is sometimes spoken of as a degradation. It is an 

 unspeakable exaltation. Recall the vast antiquity 

 of that primal cell from which the human embryo 

 first sets forth. Compass the nature of the poten- 

 tialities stored up in its plastic substance. Watch 

 all the busy processes, the multiplying energies, the 

 mystifying transitions, the inexplicable chemistry of 

 this living laboratory. Observe the variety and in- 

 tricacy of its metamorphoses, the exquisite gradation 

 of its ascent, the unerring aim with which the one 

 type unfolds — never pausing, never uncertain of its 

 direction, refusing arrest at intermediate forms, 

 passing on to its flawless maturity without waste 

 or effort or fatigue. See the sense of motion at 



