The Evolution of Man — Volume 2

The Evolution of Man — Volume 2

In turning from the embryology to the phylogeny of manfrom the development of the individual to that of the specieswe must bear in mind the direct causal connection that exists between these two main branches of the science of human evolution. This important causal nexus finds its simplest expression in "the fundamental law of organic development," the content and purport of which we have fully considered in the first chapter. According to this biogenetic law, ontogeny is a brief and condensed recapitulation of phylogeny. If this compendious reproduction were complete in all cases, it would be very easy to construct the whole story of evolution on an embryonic basis. When we wanted to know the ancestors of any higher organism, and, therefore, of manto know from what forms the race as a whole has been evolved we should merely have to follow the series of forms in the development of the individual from the ovum; we could then regard each of the successive forms as the representative of an extinct ancestral form. However, this direct application of ontogenetic facts to phylogenetic ideas is possible, without limitations, only in a very small section of the animal kingdom. There are, it is true, still a number of lower invertebrates (for instance, some of the Zoophyta and Vermalia) in which we are justified in recognising at once each embryonic form as the historical reproduction, or silhouette, as it were, of an extinct ancestor. But in the great majority of the animals, and in the case of man, this is impossible, because the embryonic forms themselves have been modified through the change of the conditions of existence, and have lost their original character to some extent. During the immeasurable course of organic history, the many millions of years during which life was developing on our planet, secondary changes of the embryonic forms have taken place in most animals. The young of animals (not only detached larvae, but also the embryos enclosed in the womb) may be modified by the influence of the environment, just as well as the mature organisms are by adaptation to the conditions of life; even species are altered during the embryonic development. Moreover, it is an advantage for all higher organisms (and the advantage is greater the more advanced they are) to curtail and simplify the original course of development, and thus to obliterate the traces of their ancestors. The higher the individual organism is in the animal kingdom, the less completely does it reproduce in its embryonic development the series of its ancestors, for reasons that are as yet only partly known to us. The fact is easily proved by comparing the different developments of higher and lower animals in any single stem. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 6710
Author: Haeckel, Ernst
Release Date: Oct 1, 2004
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: McCabe, Joseph, 1867-1955