interest. It gives us the key of the great world-riddles at which the
human mind has been working for thousands of years. The problem of the
nature of man, or the question of man's place in nature, and the
cognate inquiries as to the past, the earliest history, the present
situation, and the future of humanity--all these most important
questions are directly and intimately connected with that branch of
study which we call the science of the evolution of man, or, in one
word, "Anthropogeny" (the genesis of man). Yet it is an astonishing
fact that the science of the evolution of man does not even yet form
part of the scheme of general education. In fact, educated people even
in our day are for the most part quite ignorant of the important
truths and remarkable phenomena which anthropogeny teaches us.

As an illustration of this curious state of things, it may be pointed
out that most of what are considered to be "educated" people do not
know that every human being is developed from an egg, or ovum, and
that this egg is one simple cell, like any other plant or animal egg.
They are equally ignorant that in the course of the development of
this tiny, round egg-cell there is first formed a body that is totally
different from the human frame, and has not the remotest resemblance
to it. Most of them have never seen such a human embryo in the earlier
period of its development, and do not know that it is quite
indistinguishable from other animal embryos. At first the embryo is no
more than a round cluster of cells, then it becomes a simple hollow
sphere, the wall of which is composed of a layer of cells. Later it
approaches very closely, at one period, to the anatomic structure of
the lancelet, afterwards to that of a fish, and again to the typical
build of the amphibia and mammals. As it continues to develop, a form
appears which is like those we find at the lowest stage of mammal-life
(such as the duck-bills), then a form that resembles the marsupials,