ms capable of
manifesting it in its entirety. The first embryologic discovery we
make as the result of this study--a discovery of the utmost
importance--is that germs are one in essence, and are all endowed with
the same possibilities and potentialities. The only difference that
can be found in them is that the more evolved have acquired the power
of developing, in the same cycle, a greater number of links, so to
speak, in the chain of forms that proceeds from the atom to the
sheath, or envelope, of the Gods-Men. Thus, the highest germ which the
microscope enables us to follow--the human ovule--is first a kind of
mineral represented by the nucleus (the point, unity) of its germinal
cell; then it takes the vegetable form--a radicle, crowned by two
cotyledons (duality); afterwards it becomes a fish (multiplicity),
which is successively transformed into a batrachian, then a bird,
afterwards assuming more and more complex animal forms, until, about
the third month of foetal life, it appears in the human form.

The process of transformation is more rapid when Nature has repeated
it a certain number of times; it then represents a more extensive
portion of the ladder of evolution, but, be it noted, the process is
the same for all, and for all the ladder is composed of the same
number of steps; beings start from the same point, follow the same
path and halt at the same stages; nothing but their age causes their
inequalities. They are more than brothers, they are all
representatives of the One, that which is at the root of the Universe,
Divinity, supreme Being.

We also see that progress, the result of the conservation of
qualities, offers us repeated instances of these stages in the
reappearance, at each step of the ladder, of the forms preceding it in
the natural series. In the course of its evolution, the germ of an
animal passes through the mineral and vegetable forms; if the animal
is a bird, its final embryological form will be preceded by the animal
forms, which, in the evolutionary series, make their appearance before
the avian type; if we are dealing with a mammifer, the animal will be
the summit of all the lower types; when it is the human germ that we
are following in its development, we see that it also has contained
within itself and is successively reproducing the potentialities of
the whole preceding series. The microscope is able to show only
clearly marked stages and the most characteristic types, for evolutio