308 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
Finally, when comparing the embryos on Plates IT. and IIL, 
we must not fail to give attention again to the human 
tail (s), an organ which, in the original condition, man 
shares with all other vertebrate animals. The discovery of 
tailed men was long anxiously expected by many monistic 
philosophers, in order to establish a closer relationship 
between man and the other mammals. And in like manner 
their dualistic opponents often maintained with pride that 
the complete want of a tail formed one of the most important 
bodily distinctions between men and animals, though they 
did not bear in mind the many tailless animals which really 
exist. Now, man in the first months of development pos- 
sesses a real tail as well as his nearest kindred, the tailless 
apes (orang-outang, chimpanzee, gorilla), and vertebrate 
animals in general. But whereas, in most of them—for 
example, the dog (C, G)—in the course of development it 
always grows longer, in man (Fig. D, H) and in tailless 
mammals, at a certain period of development, it degenerates 
and finally completely disappears. However, even in fully 
developed men, the remnant of the tail is seen in the three, 
four, or five tail vertebrae (vertebra coccygex) as an 
aborted or rudimentary organ, which forms the hinder or 
lower end of the vertebral column (p. 289). 
Most persons even now refuse to acknowledge the most 
important deduction of the Theory of Descent, that is, the 
palzontological development of man from ape-like, and 
through them from still lower, mammals, and consider such 
a transformation of organic form as impossible. But, I 
ask, are the phenomena of the individual development of 
man, the fundamental features of which I have here given, 
in any way less wonderful? - Is it not in the highest 
