THE BODY OF MAN. 287 
formation of the bodily substratum extending beyond 
the limits of mere variability. Even on the assump- 
tion that the mind forms its own organ, the brain, 
the specific idea of man would necessarily have con- 
sisted in bodily improvement, as contrasted with the 
supposed rigidity of the animal organism. For, in 
principle, it is the same whether changes take place 
perceptibly in arms and legs, or imperceptibly to the 
eye, in the molecules of the brain. We are, therefore, 
only retrieving the shortcomings of philosophy when 
we attribute to the bodily mutability of man the exten- 
sion which accrues to it from the applicability of the 
doctrine of Descent to the particular case. 
The bodily accordance betwixt man and animal leaves 
the doctrine of Descent so little to desire, that the ap- 
prehension of Mephistopheles lest grovelling humanity 
should finally be alarmed at his likeness to the Deity, 
might far rather be applied to his likeness to the animal. 
The human body, like the body of every animal, points 
in its evolution to an elaboration from the undifferen- 
tiated to the specialized form. The general distribution 
of the body and the development of the several organs 
is common to man and all mammals, and in the earlier 
stages of the embryonic state to all vertebrate animals, 
and indicates this general kinship. The existence there- 
fore of a discoidal placenta (unless we prefer a special 
reiterated new creation of this organ of development, in 
which the Creator adhered to the pattern of the placenta 
of the lemurs, rodents, insectivora, bats, and apes) reduces 
us to the alternative that in thenatural and to us unknown 
development of man, chance, or some quite different 
chain of causes, led in this case, as in the other. to the 
