The Evolution of Man, vol 2, Ernst Haeckel [online e reader txt] 📗

the Italic (Roman and Latin) in the south, and the Celtic in the north: from the latter have been developed all the British (ancient British, ancient Scotch, and Irish) and Gallic varieties. The ancient Aryan gave rise to the numerous Iranian and Indian languages.

This “comparative anatomy” and evolution of languages admirably illustrates the phylogeny of species. It is clear that in structure and development the primitive languages, mother and daughter languages, and varieties, correspond exactly to the classes, orders, genera, and species of the animal world. In both cases the “natural” system is phylogenetic. As we have been convinced from comparative anatomy and ontogeny, and from paleontology, that all past and living vertebrates descend from a common ancestor, so the comparative study of dead and living Indo-Germanic tongues proves beyond question that they are all modifications of one primitive language. This view of their origin is now accepted by all the chief philologists who have worked in this branch and are unprejudiced.

But the point to which I desire particularly to draw the reader’s attention in this comparison of the Indo-Germanic languages with the branches of the vertebrate stem is, that one must never confuse direct descendants with collateral branches, nor extinct forms with living. This confusion is very common, and our opponents often make use of the erroneous ideas it gives rise to for the purpose of attacking evolution generally. When, for instance, we say that man descends from the ape, this from the lemur, and the lemur from the marsupial, many people imagine that we are speaking of the living species of these orders of mammals that they find stuffed in our museums. Our opponents then foist this idea on us, and say, with more astuteness than intelligence, that it is quite impossible; or they ask us, by way of physiological experiment, to turn a kangaroo into a lemur, a lemur into a gorilla, and a gorilla into a man! The demand is childish, and the idea it rests on erroneous. All these living forms have diverged more or less from the ancestral form; none of them could engender the same posterity that the stem-form really produced thousands of years ago.

It is certain that man has descended from some extinct mammal; and we should just as certainly class this in the order of apes if we had it before us. It is equally certain that this primitive ape descended in turn from an unknown lemur, and this from an extinct marsupial. But it is just as clear that all these extinct ancestral forms can only be claimed as belonging to the living order of mammals in virtue of their essential internal structure and their resemblance in the decisive anatomic characteristics of each ORDER. In external appearance, in the characteristics of the GENUS or SPECIES, they would differ more or less, perhaps very considerably, from all living representatives of those orders. It is a universal and natural procedure in phylogenetic development that the stem-forms themselves, with their specific peculiarities, have been extinct for some time. The forms that approach nearest to them among the living species are more or less—perhaps very substantially—different from them. Hence in our phylogenetic inquiry and in the comparative study of the living, divergent descendants, there can only be a question of determining the greater or less remoteness of the latter from the ancestral form. Not a single one of the older stem-forms has continued unchanged down to our time.

We find just the same thing in comparing the various dead and living languages that have developed from a common primitive tongue. If we examine our genealogical tree of the Indo-Germanic languages in this light, we see at once that all the older or parent tongues, of which we regard the living varieties of the stem as divergent daughter or grand-daughter languages, have been extinct for some time. The Aryo-Romanic and the Slavo-Germanic tongues have completely disappeared; so also the Aryan, the Greco-Roman, the Slavo-Lettic, and the ancient Germanic. Even their daughters and grand-daughters have been lost; all the living Indo-Germanic languages are only related in the sense that they are divergent descendants of common stem-forms. Some forms have diverged more, and some less, from the original stem-form.

This easily demonstrable fact illustrates very well the analogous case of the origin of the vertebrate species. Phylogenetic comparative philology here yields a strong support to phylogenetic comparative zoology. But the one can adduce more direct evidence than the other, as the paleontological material of philology—the old monuments of the extinct tongue—have been preserved much better than the paleontological material of zoology, the fossilised bones and imprints of vertebrates.

We may, however, trace man’s genealogical tree not only as far as the lower mammals, but much further—to the amphibia, to the shark-like primitive fishes, and, in fine, to the skull-less vertebrates that closely resembled the Amphioxus. But this must not be understood in the sense that the existing Amphioxus, or the sharks or amphibia of to-day, can give us any idea of the external appearance of these remote stem-forms. Still less must it be thought that the Amphioxus or any actual shark, or any living species of amphibia, is a real ancestral form of the higher vertebrates and man. The statement can only rationally mean that the living forms I have referred to are COLLATERAL LINES that are much more closely related to the extinct stem-forms, and have retained the resemblance much better, than any other animals we know. They are still so like them in regard to their distinctive internal structure that we should put them in the same class with the extinct forms if we had these before us. But no direct descendants of these earlier forms have remained unchanged. Hence we must entirely abandon the idea of finding direct ancestors of the human race in their characteristic EXTERNAL FORM among the living species of animals. The essential and distinctive features that still connect living forms more or less closely with the extinct common stem-forms lie in the internal structure, not the external appearance. The latter has been much modified by adaptation. The former has been more or less preserved by heredity.

Comparative anatomy and ontogeny prove beyond question that man is a true vertebrate, and, therefore, man’s special genealogical tree must be connected with that of the other Vertebrates, which spring from a common root with him. But we have also many important grounds in comparative anatomy and ontogeny for assuming a common origin for all the Vertebrates. If the general theory of evolution is correct, all the Vertebrates, including man, come from a single common ancestor, a long-extinct “Primitive Vertebrate.” Hence the genealogical tree of the Vertebrates is at the same time that of the human race.

Our task, therefore, of constructing man’s genealogy becomes the larger aim of discovering the genealogy of the entire vertebrate stem. As we now know from the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the Amphioxus and the Ascidia, this is in turn connected with the genealogical tree of the Invertebrates (directly with that of the Vermalia), but has no direct connection with the independent stems of the Articulates, Molluscs, and Echinoderms. If we do thus follow our ancestral tree through various stages down to the lowest worms, we come inevitably to the Gastraea, that most instructive form that gives the clearest possible picture of an animal with two germinal layers. The Gastraea itself has originated from the simple multicellular vesicle, the Blastaea, and this in turn must have been evolved from the lowest circle of unicellular animals, to which we give the name of Protozoa. We have already considered the most important primitive type of these, the unicellular Amoeba, which is extremely instructive when compared with the human ovum. With this we reach the lowest of the solid data to which we are to apply our biogenetic law, and by which we may deduce the extinct ancestor from the embryonic form. The amoeboid nature of the young ovum and the unicellular condition in which (as stem-cell or cytula) every human being begins its existence justify us in affirming that the earliest ancestors of the human race were simple amoeboid coils.

But the further question now arises: “Whence came these first amoebae with which the history of life began at the commencement of the Laurentian epoch?” There is only one answer to this. The earliest unicellular organisms can only have been evolved from the simplest organisms we know, the Monera. These are the simplest living things that we can conceive. Their whole body is nothing but a particle of plasm, a granule of living albuminous matter, discharging of itself all the essential vital functions that form the material basis of life. Thus we come to the last, or, if you prefer, the first, question in connection with evolution—the question of the origin of the Monera. This is the real question of the origin of life, or of spontaneous generation.

We have neither space nor occasion to go further in this Chapter into the question of spontaneous generation. For this I must refer the reader to the fifteenth chapter of the History of Creation, and especially to the second book of the General Morphology, or to the essay on “The Monera and Spontaneous Generation” in my Studies of the Monera and other Protists. ( The English reader will find a luminous and up-to-date chapter on the subject in Haeckel’s recently written and translated Wonders of Life.—Translator.) I have given there fully my own view of this important question. The famous botanist Nageli afterwards (1884) developed the same ideas. I will only say a few words here about this obscure question of the origin of life, in so far as our main subject, organic evolution in general, is affected by it. Spontaneous generation, in the definite and restricted sense in which I maintain it, and claim that it is a necessary hypothesis in explaining the origin of life, refers solely to the evolution of the Monera from inorganic carbon-compounds. When living things made their first appearance on our planet, the very complex nitrogenous compound of carbon that we call plasson, which is the earliest material embodiment of vital action, must have been formed in a purely chemical way from inorganic carbon-compounds. The first Monera were formed in the sea by spontaneous generation, as crystals are formed in the mother-water. Our demand for a knowledge of causes compels us to assume this. If we believe that the whole inorganic history of the earth has proceeded on mechanical principles without any intervention of a Creator, and that the history of life also has been determined by the same mechanical laws; if we see that there is no need to admit creative action to explain the origin of the various groups of organisms; it is utterly irrational to assume such creative action in dealing with the first appearance of organic life on the earth.

This much-disputed question of “spontaneous generation” seems so obscure, because people have associated with the term a mass of very different, and often very absurd, ideas, and have attempted to solve the difficulty by the crudest experiments. The real doctrine of the spontaneous generation of life cannot possibly be refuted by experiments. Every experiment that has a negative result only proves that no organism has been formed out of inorganic matter in the conditions—highly artificial conditions—we have established. On the other hand, it would be exceedingly difficult to prove the theory by way of experiment; and even if Monera were still formed daily by spontaneous generation (which is quite possible), it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to find a solid proof of it. Those who will not admit the spontaneous generation of the first living things in our sense must have recourse to a supernatural miracle; and this is, as a matter of fact, the desperate resource to which our “exact” scientists are driven, to the complete abdication of reason.

A famous English physicist, Lord