THE METHOD OF CREATION. 299 



diversified forms of the present epoch. That is the conclusion 

 toward which we are tending; and it is wiser to anticipate 

 and welcome it than to turn our backs on it when we see it 

 looming in sight. 



Suppose then that animals have succeeded each other in 

 nicely graduated series ; that does not demonstrate any genea- 

 logical connection between them ; it only permits us to accept 

 a theory of such connection. Each separate form in the suc- 

 cession may have been a separate origination. I ask you then 

 to turn to another set of facts very remarkable and very 

 suggestive. I refer to comparative embryology. A careful study 

 of many developing embryos, amongst animals of all ranks, 

 leads to the following conclusions: 1. Every embryo passes 

 through the same identical series of stages, up to the point 

 where it becomes adult. The higher embryos, therefore, pass 

 through a longer series, the lower, a shorter series. 2. The 

 embryonic gradations are the same as the gradations of the 

 animal kingdom -presented in a classification. One of the 

 primitive states of the embryo corresponds to the lowest 

 known type of animal; the next state, to the type next 

 superior; and so on. The human embryo, in the progress of 

 development, resembles an Amoeba, a Brachiopod, a Worm, a 

 Lancelet, a Shark, a Quadruped. Ihese are not fancies, but 

 solid facts ; and it is our business to find out what they mean. 

 3. The succession of extinct animals presents a gradation 

 which is closely analogous to that presented in the gradations 

 of living animals, and again in the embryonic stages of every 

 individual. We have thus the same succession of ideas three 

 times repeated. Does that show any connection between the 

 successions, so that one may have been derived from and 

 caused by another? Or shall we say this is all coincidence? 

 Believing in intelligible relationship of things, I choose to 

 call this a case of that kind. That is, the gradation of living 

 animals and the gradation of extinct forms result from the 

 gradation of the embryonic series in the individual. It must 

 be that ; for the individual is the starting point of all organic 

 phenomena. But, in the embryonic series, we know that each 



