It was formerly held that the entire animal creation had contributed something to the anatomy of Man, that as Serres expressed it “Human Organogenesis is a condensed Comparative Anatomy.” But though Man has not such a monopoly of the past as is here inferred—other types having here and there emerged and developed along lines of their own—it is certain that the materials for his body have been brought together from an unknown multitude of lowlier forms of life.
EAR OF BARBARY APE, CHIMPANZEE, AND MAN, SHOWING VESTIGIAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN EAR.—FROM “DARWIN AND AFTER DARWIN.”
Those who know the Cathedral of St. Mark’s will remember how this noblest of the Stones of Venice owes its greatness to the patient hands of centuries and centuries of workers, how every quarter of the globe has been spoiled of its treasures to dignify this single shrine. But he who ponders over the more ancient temple of the human body will find imagination fail him as he tries to think from what remote and mingled sources, from what lands, seas, climates, atmospheres, its various parts have been called together, and by what innumerable contributory creatures, swimming, creeping, flying, climbing, each of its several members was wrought and perfected. What ancient chisel first sculptured the rounded columns of the limbs? What dead hands built the cupola of the brain, and from what older ruins were the scattered pieces of its mosaic-work brought? Who fixed the windows in its upper walls? What forgotten looms wove its tapestries and draperies? What winds and weathers wrought the strength into its buttresses? What ocean-beds and forest glades worked up the colors? What Love and Terror and Night called forth the Music? And what Life and 58 Death and Pain and Struggle put all together in the noiseless workshop of the past and removed each worker silently when its task was done? How these things came to be Biology is one long record. The architects and builders of this mighty temple are not anonymous. Their names, and the work they did, are graven forever on the walls and arches of the Human Embryo. For this is a volume of that Book in which Man’s members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
FOOTNOTES
N. B.—They appear as “clefts,” marking not the adult fish, but the embryo at the corresponding stage.