The Evolution of Man, vol 1, Ernst Haeckel [books to read this summer TXT] 📗

in the lowest animals. When we pass the reptile and bird stage, the large yelk almost disappears (the germ now being supplied with blood by the mother), but the germ has been permanently altered in shape, and there are now a number of new embryonic processes (membranes, blood-vessel connections, etc.). Thus it was no light task to trace the identity of this process of gastrulation in all the animals. It has been done, however; and with this introduction the reader will be able to follow the proof. The conclusion is important. If all animals pass through the curious gastrula stage, it must be because they all had a common ancestor of that nature. To this conjectural ancestor (it lived before the period of fossilisation begins) Haeckel gives the name of the Gastraea, and in the second volume we shall see a number of living animals of this type (“gastraeads”).

The line of argument is the same in the next chapter. After laborious and careful research (though this stage is not generally admitted in the same sense as the previous one), a fourth common stage was discovered, and given the name of the Coelomula. The blastula had one layer of cells, the blastoderm (derma = skin): the gastrula two layers, the ectoderm (“outer skin”) and entoderm (“inner skin”). Now a third layer (mesoderm = middle skin) is formed, by the growth inwards of two pouches or folds of the skin. The pouches blend together, and form a single cavity (the body cavity, or coelom), and its two walls are two fresh “germinal layers.” Again, the identity of the process has to be proved in all the higher classes of animals, and when this is done we have another ancestral stage, the Coelomaea.

The remaining task is to build up the complex frame of the higher animals—always showing the identity of the process (on which the evolutionary argument depends) in enormously different conditions of embryonic life—out of the four “germinal layers.” Chapter 1.9

prepares us for the work by giving us a very clear account of the essential structure of the back-boned (vertebrate) animal, and the probable common ancestor of all the vertebrates (a small fish of the lancelet type). Chapters 1.11 to 1.14 then carry out the construction step by step. The work is now simpler, in the sense that we leave all the invertebrate animals out of account; but there are so many organs to be fashioned out of the four simple layers that the reader must proceed carefully. In the second volume each of these organs will be dealt with separately, and the parallel will be worked out between its embryonic and its phylogenetic (evolutionary) development. The general reader may wait for this for a full understanding. But in the meantime the wonderful story of the construction of all our organs in the course of a few weeks (the human frame is perfectly formed, though less than two inches in length, by the twelfth week) from so simple a material is full of interest. It would be useless to attempt to summarise the process. The four chapters are themselves but a summary of it, and the eighty fine illustrations of the process will make it sufficiently clear. The last chapter carries the story on to the point where man at last parts company with the anthropoid ape, and gives a full account of the membranes or wrappers that enfold him in the womb, and the connection with the mother.

In conclusion, I would urge the reader to consult, at his free library perhaps, the complete edition of this work, when he has read the present abbreviated edition. Much of the text has had to be condensed in order to bring out the work at our popular price, and the beautiful plates of the complete edition have had to be omitted. The reader will find it an immense assistance if he can consult the library edition.

JOSEPH MCCABE.

Cricklewood, March, 1906.

***

HAECKEL’S CLASSIFICATION OF THE ANIMAL WORLD.

UNICELLULAR ANIMALS (PROTOZOA).

1. Unnucleated.

Bacteria.

Protamoebae.

Monera.

2. Nucleated.

2A. Rhizopoda.

Amoebina.

Radiolaria.

2B. Infusoria.

Flagellata.

Ciliata.

3. Cell-Colonies.

Catallacta.

Blastaeada.

MULTICELLULAR ANIMALS (METAZOA).

1. COELENTERIA, COELENTERATA, OR ZOOPHYTES.

Animals without body-cavity, blood or anus.

1A. Gastraeads.

Gastremaria.

Cyemaria.

1B. Sponges.

Protospongiae.

Metaspongiae.

1C. Cnidaria (Stinging Animals).

Hydrozoa.

Polyps.

Medusae.

1D. Platodes (Flat-Worms).

Platodaria.

Turbellaria.

Trematoda.

Cestoda.

2. COELOMARIA OR BILATERALS.

Animals with body-cavity and anus, and generally blood.

2A. Vermalia (Worm-Like).

Rotatoria.

Strongylaria.

Prosopygia.

Frontonia.

2B. Molluscs.

Cochlides.

Conchades.

Teuthodes.

2C. Articulates.

Annelida.

Crustacea.

Tracheata.

2D. Echinoderms.

Monorchonia.

Pentorchonia.

2E. Tunicates.

Copelata.

Ascidiae.

Thalidiae.

2F. Vertebrates.

2F.1. Acrania-Lancelet (Without Skull).

2F.2. Craniota (With Skull).

2F.2A. Cyclostomes. (“Round-Mouthed”).

2F.2B. Fishes.

Selachii.

Ganoids.

Teleosts.

Dipneusts.

2F.2C. Amphibia.

2F.2D. Reptiles.

2F.2E. Birds.

2F.2F. Mammal.

Monotremes.

Marsupials.

Placentals:—

Rodents.

Edentates.

Ungulates.

Cetacea.

Sirenia.

Insectivora.

Cheiroptera.

Carnassia.

Primates.

(This classification is given for the purpose of explaining Haeckel’s use of terms in this volume. The general reader should bear in mind that it differs very considerably from more recent schemes of classification. He should compare the scheme framed by Professor E.

Ray Lankester.)

***

THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.

CHAPTER 1.1. THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION.

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