I may express here my opinion, in the form of a chordæa-theory, that the characteristic chordula-larva of the chordonia has in reality this great significance—it is the typical reproduction (preserved by heredity) of the ancient common stem-form of all the vertebrates and tunicates, the long-extinct _Chordæa._ We will return in Chapter XX to these worm-like ancestors, which stand out as luminous points in the obscure stem-history of the invertebrate ancestors of our race. Chapter XI. THE VERTEBRATE CHARACTER OF MAN We have now secured a number of firm standing-places in the labyrinthian course of our individual development by our study of the important embryonic forms which we have called the cytula, morula, blastula, gastrula, cœlomula, and chordula. But we have still in front of us the difficult task of deriving the complicated frame of the human body, with all its different parts, organs, members, etc., from the simple form of the chordula. We have previously considered the origin of this four-layered embryonic form from the two-layered gastrula. The two primary germinal layers, which form the entire body of the gastrula, and the two middle layers of the cœlomula that develop between them, are the four simple cell-strata, or epithelia, which alone go to the formation of the complex body of man and the higher animals. It is so difficult to understand this construction that we will first seek a companion who may help us out of many difficulties. This helpful associate is the science of comparative anatomy. Its task is, by comparing the fully-developed bodily forms in the various groups of animals, to learn the general laws of organisation according to which the body is constructed; at the same time, it has to determine the affinities of the various groups by critical appreciation of the degrees of difference between them. Formerly, this work was conceived in a teleological sense, and it was sought to find traces of the plan of the Creator in the actual purposive organisation of animals. But comparative anatomy has gone much deeper since the establishment of the theory of descent; its philosophic aim now is to explain the variety of organic forms by adaptation, and their similarity by heredity. At the same time, it has to recognise in the shades of difference in form the degree of blood-relationship, and make an effort to construct the ancestral tree of the animal world. In this way, comparative anatomy enters into the closest relations with comparative embryology on the one hand, and with the science of classification on the other.