Chapter 402

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Androgyne Third Race. The Evolutionist Professor Schmidt alludes to “the fact of the separation of sexes, as to the derivation of which from species once hermaphrodite all [the believers in Creation naturally excepted] are assuredly of one accord.” (Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, p. 159.) Such indeed is the incontestable evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. Apart from such palpable traces of a primeval hermaphroditism, the fact may be noted that, as Laing writes, “a study of embryology ... shows that in the human higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo.” (A Modern Zoroastrian, p. 106.) The Law of Retardation—operative alike in the case of human races, animal species, etc., when a higher type has once been evolved—still preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority of plants and many lower animals.