ch. ix.] SPECIAL-CREATION, OR DERIVATION? 457 



amazingly complex creature as a man or an elephant, was 

 not at that time understood. It seemed utterly incredible 

 that a human infant could have so recently been a simple 

 globule of protoplasm. It was accordingly maintained that, 

 since an infant resembles an adult in most respects save that 

 of size, the original germ must be a minute copy of the 

 infant. From the germ to the adult man there was no 

 increase in complexity, there was only increase in dimen- 

 sions. As a necessary consequence the germs of each genera- 

 tion were contained within the germs of the next preceding 

 Generation : so that in mother Eve were contained the minia- 

 ture originals of the entire human race, completely shaped in 

 every feature, and shut up one within another, like a series of 

 Chinese boxes ! 



This hypothesis now strikes us as superlatively absurd. 

 But it has been upheld by some of the greatest biologists 

 who have ever lived, — by Swammerdamm, Haller, Bonnet, 

 Eeaumur, and Cuvier, — and to my mind it is less grotesque 

 than the hypothesis of special creations. But what now con- 

 cerns us is the fact that the doom of the latter hypothesis is 

 inevitably involved in the destruction of the former. For not 

 only may it be forcibly argued " that we can no more under- 

 stand the appearance of a new organism which is not the 

 modification of some already existing organism, than we can 

 understand the sudden appearance of a new organ which is not 

 the modification of some existing structure;" but there was 

 yet another deadly weapon lying concealed amid the mass of 

 evidence with which Wolff and Von Baer overthrew the pre- 

 formation theory. Why this roundabout method, above 

 described, in which the germs of the higher organisms are 

 seen to develope ? Why does a mammal begin to develope 

 as if it were going to become a fish, and then, changing its 

 course, act as if it were going to become a reptile or bird, and 

 only after much delay assume the peculiar characteristics of 

 mammals? The human embryo, for example, begins with 



