The Evolution of Man, V.1. by Ernst Haeckel (most read book in the world .TXT) 📖

[See also Preyer's Mental Development in the Child (translation), and Sully's Studies of Childhood and Children's Ways.]

In this way we follow the only path along which we may hope to reach the solution of this difficult problem.

Thirty-six years have now elapsed since, in my General Morphology, I established phylogeny as an independent science and showed its intimate causal connection with ontogeny; thirty years have passed since I gave in my gastraea-theory the proof of the justice of this, and completed it with the theory of germinal layers. When we look back on this period we may ask, What has been accomplished during it by the fundamental law of biogeny? If we are impartial, we must reply that it has proved its fertility in hundreds of sound results, and that by its aid we have acquired a vast fund of knowledge which we should never have obtained without it.

There has been no dearth of attacks--often violent attacks--on my conception of an intimate causal connection between ontogenesis and phylogenesis; but no other satisfactory explanation of these important phenomena has yet been offered to us. I say this especially with regard to Wilhelm His's theory of a "mechanical evolution," which questions the truth of phylogeny generally, and would explain the complicated embryonic processes without going beyond by simple physical changes--such as the bending and folding of leaves by electricity, the origin of cavities through unequal strain of the tissues, the formation of processes by uneven growth, and so on. But the fact is that these embryological phenomena themselves demand explanation in turn, and this can only be found, as a rule, in the corresponding changes in the long ancestral series, or in the physiological functions of heredity and adaptation.

CHAPTER II(2. THE OLDER EMBRYOLOGY.)

 

It is in many ways useful, on entering upon the study of any science, to cast a glance at its historical development. The saying that "everything is best understood in its growth" has a distinct application to science. While we follow its gradual development we get a clearer insight into its aims and objects. Moreover, we shall see that the present condition of the science of human evolution, with all its characteristics, can only be rightly understood when we examine its historical growth. This task will, however, not detain us long. The study of man's evolution is one of the latest branches of natural science, whether you consider the embryological or the phylogenetic section of it.

Apart from the few germs of our science which we find in classical antiquity, and which we shall notice presently, we may say that it takes its definite rise, as a science, in the year 1759, when one of the greatest German scientists, Caspar Friedrich Wolff, published his Theoria generationis. That was the foundation-stone of the science of animal embryology. It was not until fifty years later, in 1809, that Jean Lamarck published his Philosophie Zoologique--the first effort to provide a base for the theory of evolution; and it was another half-century before Darwin's work appeared (in 1859), which we may regard as the first scientific attainment of this aim. But before we go further into this solid establishment of evolution, we must cast a brief glance at that famous philosopher and scientist of antiquity, who stood alone in this, as in many other branches of science, for more than 2000 years: the "father of Natural History," Aristotle.

The extant scientific works of Aristotle deal with many different sides of biological research; the most comprehensive of them is his famous History of Animals. But not less interesting is the smaller work, On the Generation of Animals (Peri zoon geneseos). This work treats especially of embryonic development, and it is of great interest as being the earliest of its kind and the only one that has come down to us in any completeness from classical antiquity.

Aristotle studied embryological questions in various classes of animals, and among the lower groups he learned many most remarkable facts which we only rediscovered between 1830 and 1860. It is certain, for instance, that he was acquainted with the very peculiar mode of propagation of the cuttlefishes, or cephalopods, in which a yelk-sac hangs out of the mouth of the foetus. He knew, also, that embryos come from the eggs of the bee even when they have not been fertilised. This "parthenogenesis" (or virgin-birth) of the bees has only been established in our time by the distinguished zoologist of Munich, Siebold. He discovered that male bees come from the unfertilised, and female bees only from the fertilised, eggs. Aristotle further states that some kinds of fishes (of the genus serranus) are hermaphrodites, each individual having both male and female organs and being able to fertilise itself; this, also, has been recently confirmed. He knew that the embryo of many fishes of the shark family is attached to the mother's body by a sort of placenta, or nutritive organ very rich in blood; apart from these, such an arrangement is only found among the higher mammals and man. This placenta of the shark was looked upon as legendary for a long time, until Johannes Muller proved it to be a fact in 1839. Thus a number of remarkable discoveries were found in Aristotle's embryological work, proving a very good acquaintance of the great scientist--possibly helped by his predecessors--with the facts of ontogeny, and a great advance upon succeeding generations in this respect.

In the case of most of these discoveries he did not merely describe the fact, but added a number of observations on its significance. Some of these theoretical remarks are of particular interest, because they show a correct appreciation of the nature of the embryonic processes. He conceives the development of the individual as a new formation, in the course of which the various parts of the body take shape successively. When the human or animal frame is developed in the mother's body, or separately in an egg, the heart--which he regards as the starting-point and centre of the organism--must appear first. Once the heart is formed the other organs arise, the internal ones before the external, the upper (those above the diaphragm) before the lower (or those beneath the diaphragm). The brain is formed at an early stage, and the eyes grow out of it. These observations are quite correct. And, if we try to form some idea from these data of Aristotle's general conception of the embryonic process, we find a dim prevision of the theory which Wolff showed 2000 years afterwards to be the correct view. It is significant, for instance, that Aristotle denied the eternity of the individual in any respect. He said that the species or genus, the group of similar individuals, might be eternal, but the individual itself is temporary. It comes into being in the act of procreation, and passes away at death.

During the 2000 years after Aristotle no progress whatever was made in general zoology, or in embryology in particular. People were content to read, copy, translate, and comment on Aristotle. Scarcely a single independent effort at research was made in the whole of the period. During the Middle Ages the spread of strong religious beliefs put formidable obstacles in the way of independent scientific investigation. There was no question of resuming the advance of biology. Even when human anatomy began to stir itself once more in the sixteenth century, and independent research was resumed into the structure of the developed body, anatomists did not dare to extend their inquiries to the unformed body, the embryo, and its development. There were many reasons for the prevailing horror of such studies. It is natural enough, when we remember that a Bull of Boniface VIII excommunicated every man who ventured to dissect a human corpse. If the dissection of a developed body were a crime to be thus punished, how much more dreadful must it have seemed to deal with the embryonic body still enclosed in the womb, which the Creator himself had decently veiled from the curiosity of the scientist! The Christian Church, then putting many thousands to death for unbelief, had a shrewd presentiment of the menace that science contained against its authority. It was powerful enough to see that its rival did not grow too quickly.

It was not until the Reformation broke the power of the Church, and a refreshing breath of the spirit dissolved the icy chains that bound science, that anatomy and embryology, and all the other branches of research, could begin to advance once more. However, embryology lagged far behind anatomy. The first works on embryology appear at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Italian anatomist, Fabricius ab Aquapendente, a professor at Padua, opened the advance. In his two books (De formato foetu, 1600, and De formatione foetus, 1604) he published the older illustrations and descriptions of the embryos of man and other mammals, and of the hen. Similar imperfect illustrations were given by Spigelius (De formato foetu, 1631), and by Needham (1667) and his more famous compatriot, Harvey (1652), who discovered the circulation of the blood in the animal body and formulated the important principle, Omne vivum ex vivo (all life comes from pre-existing life). The Dutch scientist, Swammerdam, published in his Bible of Nature the earliest observations on the embryology of the frog and the division of its egg-yelk. But the most important embryological studies in the sixteenth century were those of the famous Italian, Marcello Malpighi, of Bologna, who led the way both in zoology and botany. His treatises, De formatione pulli and De ovo incubato (1687), contain the first consistent description of the development of the chick in the fertilised egg.

Here I ought to say a word about the important part played by the chick in the growth of our science. The development of the chick, like that of the young of all other birds, agrees in all its main features with that of the other chief vertebrates, and even of man. The three highest classes of vertebrates--mammals, birds, and reptiles (lizards, serpents, tortoises, etc.)--have from the beginning of their embryonic development so striking a resemblance in all the chief points of structure, and especially in their first forms, that for a long time it is impossible to distinguish between them. We have known now for some time that we need only examine the embryo of a bird, which is the easiest to get at, in order to learn the typical mode of development of a mammal (and therefore of man). As soon as scientists began to study the human embryo, or the mammal-embryo generally, in its earlier stages about the middle and end of the seventeenth century, this important fact was very quickly discovered. It is both theoretically and practically of great value. As regards the THEORY of evolution, we can draw the most weighty inferences from this similarity between the embryos of widely different classes of animals. But for the practical purposes of embryological research the discovery is invaluable, because we can fill up the gaps in our imperfect knowledge of the embryology of the mammals from the more thoroughly studied embryology of the bird. Hens' eggs are easily to be had in any quantity, and the development of the chick may be followed step by step in artificial