Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/359

 in creation, in the process of its development these degrees must have rule in succession. Since the animal form approached the human as it ascended to embrace the higher degrees, it is natural that the fœtus should successively resemble some form of the lower orders while the specific degrees of the order are respectively active.

That the human fœtus should range the animal scale is, so far as it is true, confirmative not of Evolution, but of the fact that man is a microcosm, a little universe, in which there are representatively the essentials of the macrocosm. That the developing fœtus resembles lower forms of animals is not only a demonstration of the fact that man is a microcosm, but also that the higher animals are microcosms, in a less perfect degree, of what precedes them. We have in the development of the fœtus a beautiful illustration of how fully there is gathered into the forms of the higher animals as their nature the essence of what had gone before, and of how the universal animal kingdom is gathered into man.

A full discussion of this subject is not in the line of the present purpose, yet a few general