have a firm hold upon the hairy coat of its tree-climbing mother. When the
newborn child hangs in this way, it bends its curved lower limbs so that
the soles of the feet are turned toward one another, thus increasing its
resemblance to the ape.

Let us realize that these curious relics found in so many places in the
framework of man are not unique, and that they are reduced counterparts of
larger and more valuable structures in the ape. Unless evolution is true,
they have absolutely no sensible reasons for existence. Science prefers
the evolutionary explanation of their occurrence because this explanation
is more in harmony with the facts known about other organisms, and it is
more reasonable than any other.

* * * * *

When we dealt with the general doctrine of natural transformation, it
appeared that the evidence of embryology was in many respects more cogent
and conclusive than that derived from the comparative study of animal
structures. In the case of man, as before, no one could demand any surer
or more convincing proof that an organic mechanism with one structure can
change into an organic mechanism with a different structure, than the
obvious facts of development. The embryo, which is not an infant or an
adult, becomes an infant which must work its way onward by the gradual
accumulation of slight changes here and there and everywhere in its
anatomy, until it becomes mature. Each and every one of us has actually
undergone the process of organic change in becoming what we are, and we
cannot deny the reality of such a process without challenging the evidence
of our senses.

When the full import of this history is realized, and when we look further
into the nature of these preliminary conditions through which the human
organism passes in development, we are forcibly impressed by other facts
than the one to which I have directed your attention, for not only do we
find natural transformation, as in the other mammals, but the embryonic
stages are marvelously similar to the earlier conditions in other mammals.
Not very long before birth the human embryo is strikingly similar to the
embryo of the ape; still earlier, it presents an appearance very like that
of the embryos of other mammals lower in the scale, like the cat and the
rabbit,--forms which comparative anatomy independently holds to be more
remote relatives of the human species. Indeed, as we trace back the still
earlier histor