SIMILARITY OF MAN’S AND DOG'S EMBRYO. 295 
or unwillingly, that these invaluable facts of human ontogeny 
are, even at the present day, utterly unknown to most 
people, or are in no way valued as they deserve to be. It is 
in the face of such a condition of things as this that we see 
clearly upon what a wrong and one-sided road the much 
vaunted culture of the 19th century still moves. Ignorance 
and superstition are the foundations upon which most men 
construct their conception of their own organism and its rela- 
tion to the totality of things; and these palpable facts of 
the history of development, which might throw the light 
of truth upon them, are ignored. It is true these facts are 
not calculated to excite approval among those who assume a 
thorough difference between man and the rest of nature, and 
who will not acknowledge the animal origin of the human 
race. That origin must be a very unpleasant truth to 
members of the ruling and privileged castes in those nations 
among which there exists an hereditary division of social 
classes, in consequence of false ideas about the laws of in- 
heritance. It is well known that, even in our day, in many 
civilized countries the idea of hereditary grades of rank 
goes so far, that, for example, the aristocracy imagine them- 
selves to be of a nature totally different from that of or- 
dinary citizens, and nobles who commit a disgraceful 
offence are punished by being expelled from the caste of 
nobles, and thrust down among the pariahs of “vulgar 
citizens.” What are these nobles to think of the noble blood 
which flows in their privileged veins, when they learn that 
all human embryos, those of nobles as well as commoners, 
during the first two months of development, are scarcely 
distinguishable from the tailed embryos of dogs and other 
mainmals ? 
