This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage from _Isis Unveiled_ may here be cited to furnish a few points of comparison. It was asked why, with all their great learning, Physiologists were unable to explain teratological phenomena? Any Anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo ... “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much brain‐work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn—a tadpole. But no Physiologist or Anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development of the human being—from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth—the Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics. The meaning of the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man,” etc., was mentioned in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter clearer. What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, say some Physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others. If it could be analyzed—by the microscope or otherwise—of what ought we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same elements as a stone—of the same elements as the Earth, which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.