390 ORIGIN OF MAN. 



mentary organ, as in man and the apes ; not a mere 

 appendage, as in the fox ; not a secondary instrument, 

 a spare hand, as in certain monkeys, or a fly-flapper, 

 as in the giraffe : but as a primary organ of the very 

 first importance, endowing the fish with its locomotive 

 powers. Again, we examine the body of the fish, and 

 we find in it also rudimentary organs as useless and 

 incongruous as the tail in man ; and thus we descend 

 step by step, until we arrive at the very bottom of 

 the scale. 



The method of development is still being actively dis- 

 cussed, but the fact is placed beyond a doubt. Since the 

 " Origin of Species " appeared, philosophical naturalists 

 no longer deny that the ancestors of man must be 

 sought for in the lower kingdom. And, apart from 

 the evidence which we carry with us in our own persons, 

 which we read in the tail-bone of the skeleton, in the 

 hair which was once the clothing of our bodies, in the 

 nails which were once our weapons of defence, and in 

 a hundred other facts which the scalpel and the micro- 

 scope disclose ; apart from the evidence of our own 

 voices, our incoherent groans and cries, analogy alone 

 would lead us to believe that mankind had been de- 

 veloped from the lowest forms of life. For what is 

 the history of the individual man ? He begins life 

 as an ambiguous speck of matter which can in no way 

 be distinguished from the original form of the lowest 

 animal or plant. He next becomes a cell ; his life is 

 precisely that of the animalcule. Cells cluster round 

 this primordial cell, and the man is so far advanced 

 that he might be mistaken for an undeveloped oyster; 

 he grows still more, and it is clear that he might even 

 be a fish ; he then passes into a stage which is common 

 to all quadrupeds, and next assumes a form which can 



