For not to mention
organs of digestion, circulation, and generation, which are common to
all animals, and without which the animal would cease to be an animal,
and could neither continue to exist nor reproduce itself--there is
none the less even in those very parts which constitute the main
difference in outward appearance, a striking resemblance which carries
with it irresistibly the idea of a single pattern after which all
would appear to have been conceived. The horse, for example--what can
at first sight seem more unlike mankind? Yet when we compare man and
horse point by point and detail by detail, is not our wonder excited
rather by the points of resemblance than of difference that are to be
found between them? Take the skeleton of a man; bend forward the
bones in the region of the pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those
of the leg and arm, lengthen those of the feet and hands, run the
joints together, lengthen the jaws, and shorten the frontal bone,
finally, lengthen the spine, and the skeleton will now be that of a
man no longer, but will have become that of a horse--for it is easy to
imagine that in lengthening the spine and the jaws we shall at the
same time have increased the number of the vertebrae, ribs, and teeth.
It is but in the number of these bones, which may be considered
accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode of attachment
of others, that the skeleton of the horse differs from that of the
human body.
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