true of
the individual, as nobody denies, why should we consider it derogatory to
human dignity to admit a similar development for the species? This is a
very different thing from claiming that man is descended from a monkey.
The human embryo may at one time resemble a fish with gill-slits and tail,
but it is not a fish. It is a human embryo. So the human species(38) may
at various stages of its long development have resembled to the outward
eye various species of lower animals, but it was still the human species,
possessing the mysterious latent power of developing into man as we know
him today, nay more, of developing in the future, we trust, into something
far higher still.

'Abdu'l-Baha says:--

... it is clear that this terrestrial globe in its present form
did not come into existence all at once; but ... gradually passed
through different phases until it became adorned with its present
perfection....

... man, in the beginning of his existence and in the womb of the
earth, like the embryo in the womb of the mother, gradually grew
and developed, and passed from one form to another ... until he
appeared with this beauty and perfection, this force and this
power. It is certain that in the beginning he had not this
loveliness and grace and elegance, and that he only by degrees
attained this shape, this form, this beauty, and this grace....

... man's existence on this earth, from the beginning until it
reaches this state, form, and condition, necessarily lasts a long
time.... But from the beginning of man's existence he is a
distinct species.... admitting that the traces of organs which
have disappeared actually exist [in the human body], this is not a
proof of the impermanence and the non-originality of the species.
At the most it proves that the form, and fashion, and the organs
of man have progressed. Man was always a distinct species, a man,
not an animal.--Some Answered Questions, pp. 211, 212, 213, 214.

Of the story of Adam and Eve He says:--

If we take this story in its apparent meaning, according to the
interpretation of the masses, it is indeed extraordinary. The
intelligence cannot accept it, affirm it, or imagine it; for such
arrangements, such details, such speeches and reproaches are far
from being those of an intelligent man, how must less of the
Divinity--that Divinity who has orga