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On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals by Thomas Henry Huxley
page 10 of 68 (14%)
results are yielded by the study of the development of Man. Is he
something apart? Does he originate in a totally different way from Dog,
Bird, Frog, and Fish, thus justifying those who assert him to have no
place in nature and no real affinity with the lower world of animal
life? Or does he originate in a similar germ, pass through the same
slow and gradually progressive modifications,--depend on the same
contrivances for protection and nutrition, and finally enter the world
by the help of the same mechanism? The reply is not doubtful for a
moment, and has not been doubtful any time these thirty years. Without
question, the mode of origin and the early stages of the development of
man are identical with those of the animals immediately below him in the
scale:--without a doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer the Apes,
than the Apes are to the Dog.

The Human ovum is about l/125 of an inch in diameter, and might be
described in the same terms as that of the Dog, so that I need only
refer to the figure illustrative (14 A) of its structure. It leaves
the organ in which it is formed in a similar fashion and enters the
organic chamber prepared for its reception in the same way, the
conditions of its development being in all respects the same. It has
not yet been possible (and only by some rare chance can it ever be
possible) to study the human ovum in so early a developmental stage as
that of yelk division, but there is every reason to conclude that the
changes it undergoes are identical with those exhibited by the ova of
other vertebrated animals; for the formative materials of which the
rudimentary human body is composed, in the earliest conditions in which
it has been observed, are the same as those of other animals. Some of
these earliest stages are figured below, and, as will be seen, they are
strictly comparable to the very early states of the Dog; the marvellous
correspondence between the two which is kept up, even for some time, as
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