The Evolution of Man, V.1., Ernst Haeckel [ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT] 📗

The field of natural phenomena into which I would introduce my readers in the following chapters has a quite peculiar place in the broad realm of scientific inquiry. There is no object of investigation that touches man more closely, and the knowledge of which should be more acceptable to him, than his own frame. But among all the various branches of the natural history of mankind, or anthropology, the story of his development by natural means must excite the most lively interest. It gives us the key of the great world-riddles at which the human mind has been working for thousands of years. The problem of the nature of man, or the question of man's place in nature, and the cognate inquiries as to the past, the earliest history, the present situation, and the future of humanity--all these most important questions are directly and intimately connected with that branch of study which we call the science of the evolution of man, or, in one word, "Anthropogeny" (the genesis of man). Yet it is an astonishing fact that the science of the evolution of man does not even yet form part of the scheme of general education. In fact, educated people even in our day are for the most part quite ignorant of the important truths and remarkable phenomena which anthropogeny teaches us.

As an illustration of this curious state of things, it may be pointed out that most of what are considered to be "educated" people do not know that every human being is developed from an egg, or ovum, and that this egg is one simple cell, like any other plant or animal egg. They are equally ignorant that in the course of the development of this tiny, round egg-cell there is first formed a body that is totally different from the human frame, and has not the remotest resemblance to it. Most of them have never seen such a human embryo in the earlier period of its development, and do not know that it is quite indistinguishable from other animal embryos. At first the embryo is no more than a round cluster of cells, then it becomes a simple hollow sphere, the wall of which is composed of a layer of cells. Later it approaches very closely, at one period, to the anatomic structure of the lancelet, afterwards to that of a fish, and again to the typical build of the amphibia and mammals. As it continues to develop, a form appears which is like those we find at the lowest stage of mammal-life (such as the duck-bills), then a form that resembles the marsupials, and only at a late stage a form that has a resemblance to the ape; until at last the definite human form emerges and closes the series of transformations. These suggestive facts are, as I said, still almost unknown to the general public--so completely unknown that, if one casually mentions them, they are called in question or denied outright as fairy-tales. Everybody knows that the butterfly emerges from the pupa, and the pupa from a quite different thing called a larva, and the larva from the butterfly's egg. But few besides medical men are aware that MAN, in the course of his individual formation, passes through a series of transformations which are not less surprising and wonderful than the familiar metamorphoses of the butterfly.

The mere description of these remarkable changes through which man passes during his embryonic life should arouse considerable interest. But the mind will experience a far keener satisfaction when we trace these curious facts to their causes, and when we learn to behold in them natural phenomena which are of the highest importance throughout the whole field of human knowledge. They throw light first of all on the "natural history of creation," then on psychology, or "the science of the soul," and through this on the whole of philosophy. And as the general results of every branch of inquiry are summed up in philosophy, all the sciences come in turn to be touched and influenced more or less by the study of the evolution of man.

But when I say that I propose to present here the most important features of these phenomena and trace them to their causes, I take the term, and I interpret my task, in a very much wider sense than is usual. The lectures which have been delivered on this subject in the universities during the last half-century are almost exclusively adapted to medical men. Certainly, the medical man has the greatest interest in studying the origin of the human body, with which he is daily occupied. But I must not give here this special description of the embryonic processes such as it has hitherto been given, as most of my readers have not studied anatomy, and are not likely to be entrusted with the care of the adult organism. I must content myself with giving some parts of the subject only in general outline, and must not enter upon all the marvellous, but very intricate and not easily described, details that are found in the story of the development of the human frame. To understand these fully a knowledge of anatomy is needed. I will endeavour to be as plain as possible in dealing with this branch of science. Indeed, a sufficient general idea of the course of the embryonic development of man can be obtained without going too closely into the anatomic details. I trust we may be able to arouse the same interest in this delicate field of inquiry as has been excited already in other branches of science; though we shall meet more obstacles here than elsewhere.

The story of the evolution of man, as it has hitherto been expounded to medical students, has usually been confined to embryology--more correctly, ontogeny--or the science of the development of the individual human organism. But this is really only the first part of our task, the first half of the story of the evolution of man in that wider sense in which we understand it here. We must add as the second half--as another and not less important and interesting branch of the science of the evolution of the human stem--phylogeny: this may be described as the science of the evolution of the various animal forms from which the human organism has been developed in the course of countless ages. Everybody now knows of the great scientific activity that was occasioned by the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. The chief direct consequence of this publication was to provoke a fresh inquiry into the origin of the human race, and this has proved beyond question our gradual evolution from the lower species. We give the name of "Phylogeny" to the science which describes this ascent of man from the lower ranks of the animal world. The chief source that it draws upon for facts is "Ontogeny," or embryology, the science of the development of the individual organism. Moreover, it derives a good deal of support from paleontology, or the science of fossil remains, and even more from comparative anatomy, or morphology.

These two branches of our science--on the one side ontogeny or embryology, and on the other phylogeny, or the science of race-evolution--are most vitally connected. The one cannot be understood without the other. It is only when the two branches fully co-operate and supplement each other that "Biogeny" (or the science of the genesis of life in the widest sense) attains to the rank of a philosophic science. The connection between them is not external and superficial, but profound, intrinsic, and causal. This is a discovery made by recent research, and it is most clearly and correctly expressed in the comprehensive law which I have called "the fundamental law of organic evolution," or "the fundamental law of biogeny." This general law, to which we shall find ourselves constantly recurring, and on the recognition of which depends one's whole insight into the story of evolution, may be briefly expressed in the phrase: "The history of the foetus is a recapitulation of the history of the race"; or, in other words, "Ontogeny is a recapitulation of phylogeny." It may be more fully stated as follows: The series of forms through which the individual organism passes during its development from the ovum to the complete bodily structure is a brief, condensed repetition of the long series of forms which the animal ancestors of the said organism, or the ancestral forms of the species, have passed through from the earliest period of organic life down to the present day.

The causal character of the relation which connects embryology with stem-history is due to the action of heredity and adaptation. When we have rightly understood these, and recognised their great importance in the formation of organisms, we can go a step further and say: Phylogenesis is the mechanical cause of ontogenesis.* (* The term "genesis," which occurs throughout, means, of course, "birth" or origin. From this we get: Biogeny = the origin of life (bios); Anthropogeny = the origin of man (anthropos); Ontogeny = the origin of the individual (on); Phylogeny = the origin of the species (phulon); and so on. In each case the term may refer to the process itself, or to the science describing the process.--Translator.) In other words, the development of the stem, or race, is, in accordance with the laws of heredity and adaptation, the cause of all the changes which appear in a condensed form in the evolution of the foetus.

The chain of manifold animal forms which represent the ancestry of each higher organism, or even of man, according to the theory of descent, always form a connected whole. We may designate this uninterrupted series of forms with the letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, etc., to Z. In apparent contradiction to what I have said, the story of the development of the individual, or the ontogeny of most organisms, only offers to the observer a part of these forms; so that the defective series of embryonic forms would run: A, B, D, F, H, K, M, etc.; or, in other cases, B, D, H, L, M, N, etc. Here, then, as a rule, several of the evolutionary forms of the original series have fallen out. Moreover, we often find--to continue with our illustration from the alphabet--one or other of the original letters of the ancestral series represented by corresponding letters from a different alphabet. Thus, instead of the Roman B and D, we often have the Greek Beta and Delta. In this case the text of the biogenetic law has been corrupted, just as it had been abbreviated in the preceding case. But, in spite of all this, the series of ancestral forms remains the same, and we are in a position to discover its original complexion.

In reality, there is always a certain parallel between the two evolutionary series. But it is obscured from the fact that in the embryonic succession much is wanting that certainly existed in the earlier ancestral succession. If the parallel of the two series were complete, and if this great fundamental law affirming the causal connection between ontogeny and phylogeny in the proper sense of the word were directly demonstrable, we should only have to determine, by means of the microscope and the dissecting knife, the series of forms through which the fertilised ovum passes in its development; we should then have before us a complete picture of the remarkable series of forms which our animal ancestors have successively assumed from the dawn of organic life down to the appearance of man. But such a repetition of the ancestral history by the individual in its embryonic life is very rarely complete. We do not often find our