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 ill.u.s.tration 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 b.u.t.terfly emerges from the pupa, and the pupa from a quite different thing called a larva, and the larva from the b.u.t.terfly"s egg. But few besides medical men are aware that MAN, in the course of his individual formation, pa.s.ses through a series of transformations which are not less surprising and wonderful than the familiar metamorphoses of the b.u.t.terfly.
The mere description of these remarkable changes through which man pa.s.ses 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. .h.i.therto 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. .h.i.therto 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 pa.s.ses during its development from the ovum to the complete bodily structure is a brief, condensed repet.i.tion of the long series of forms which the animal ancestors of the said organism, or the ancestral forms of the species, have pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 pa.s.ses in its development; we should then have before us a complete picture of the remarkable series of forms which our animal ancestors have successively a.s.sumed from the dawn of organic life down to the appearance of man. But such a repet.i.tion of the ancestral history by the individual in its embryonic life is very rarely complete. We do not often find our full alphabet.
In most cases the correspondence is very imperfect, being greatly distorted and falsified by causes which we will consider later. We are thus, for the most part, unable to determine in detail, from the study of its embryology, all the different shapes which an organism"s ancestors have a.s.sumed; we usually--and especially in the case of the human foetus--encounter many gaps. It is true that we can fill up most of these gaps satisfactorily with the help of comparative anatomy, but we cannot do so from direct embryological observation. Hence it is important that we find a large number of lower animal forms to be still represented in the course of man"s embryonic development. In these cases we may draw our conclusions with the utmost security as to the nature of the ancestral form from the features of the form which the embryo momentarily a.s.sumes.
To give a few examples, we can infer from the fact that the human ovum is a simple cell that the first ancestor of our species was a tiny unicellular being, something like the amoeba. In the same way, we know, from the fact that the human foetus consists, at the first, of two simple cell-layers (the gastrula), that the gastraea, a form with two such layers, was certainly in the line of our ancestry. A later human embryonic form (the chordula) points just as clearly to a worm-like ancestor (the prochordonia), the nearest living relation of which is found among the actual ascidiae. To this succeeds a most important embryonic stage (acrania), in which our headless foetus presents, in the main, the structure of the lancelet. But we can only indirectly and approximately, with the aid of comparative anatomy and ontogeny, conjecture what lower forms enter into the chain of our ancestry between the gastraea and the chordula, and between this and the lancelet. In the course of the historical development many intermediate structures have gradually fallen out, which must certainly have been represented in our ancestry. But, in spite of these many, and sometimes very appreciable, gaps, there is no contradiction between the two successions. In fact, it is the chief purpose of this work to prove the real harmony and the original parallelism of the two. I hope to show, on a substantial basis of facts, that we can draw most important conclusions as to our genealogical tree from the actual and easily-demonstrable series of embryonic changes. We shall then be in a position to form a general idea of the wealth of animal forms which have figured in the direct line of our ancestry in the lengthy history of organic life.
In this evolutionary appreciation of the facts of embryology we must, of course, take particular care to distinguish sharply and clearly between the primitive, palingenetic (or ancestral) evolutionary processes and those due to cenogenesis.* (* Palingenesis = new birth, or re-incarnation (palin = again, genesis or genea = development); hence its application to the phenomena which are recapitulated by heredity from earlier ancestral forms. Cenogenesis = foreign or negligible development (kenos and genea); hence, those phenomena which come later in the story of life to disturb the inherited structure, by a fresh adaptation to environment.--Translator.) By palingenetic processes, or embryonic recapitulations, we understand all those phenomena in the development of the individual which are transmitted from one generation to another by heredity, and which, on that account, allow us to draw direct inferences as to corresponding structures in the development of the species. On the other hand, we give the name of cenogenetic processes, or embryonic variations, to all those phenomena in the foetal development that cannot be traced to inheritance from earlier species, but are due to the adaptation of the foetus, or the infant-form, to certain conditions of its embryonic development. These cenogenetic phenomena are foreign or later additions; they allow us to draw no direct inference whatever as to corresponding processes in our ancestral history, but rather hinder us from doing so.
This careful discrimination between the primary or palingenetic processes and the secondary or cenogenetic is of great importance for the purposes of the scientific history of a species, which has to draw conclusions from the available facts of embryology, comparative anatomy, and paleontology, as to the processes in the formation of the species in the remote past. It is of the same importance to the student of evolution as the careful distinction between genuine and spurious texts in the works of an ancient writer, or the purging of the real text from interpolations and alterations, is for the student of philology. It is true that this distinction has not yet been fully appreciated by many scientists. For my part, I regard it as the first condition for forming any just idea of the evolutionary process, and I believe that we must, in accordance with it, divide embryology into two sections--palingenesis, or the science of recapitulated forms; and cenogenesis, or the science of supervening structures.
To give at once a few examples from the science of man"s origin in ill.u.s.tration of this important distinction, I may instance the following processes in the embryology of man, and of all the higher vertebrates, as palingenetic: the formation of the two primary germinal layers and of the primitive gut, the undivided structure of the dorsal nerve-tube, the appearance of a simple axial rod between the medullary tube and the gut, the temporary formation of the gill-clefts and arches, the primitive kidneys, and so on.* (* All these, and the following structures, will be fully described in later chapters.--Translator.) All these, and many other important structures, have clearly been transmitted by a steady heredity from the early ancestors of the mammal, and are, therefore, direct indications of the presence of similar structures in the history of the stem. On the other hand, this is certainly not the case with the following embryonic forms, which we must describe as cenogenetic processes: the formation of the yelk-sac, the allantois, the placenta, the amnion, the serolemma, and the chorion--or, generally speaking, the various foetal membranes and the corresponding changes in the blood vessels. Further instances are: the dual structure of the heart cavity, the temporary division of the plates of the primitive vertebrae and lateral plates, the secondary closing of the ventral and intestinal walls, the formation of the navel, and so on. All these and many other phenomena are certainly not traceable to similar structures in any earlier and completely-developed ancestral form, but have arisen simply by adaptation to the peculiar conditions of embryonic life (within the foetal membranes). In view of these facts, we may now give the following more precise expression to our chief law of biogeny: The evolution of the foetus (or ontogenesis) is a condensed and abbreviated recapitulation of the evolution of the stem (or phylogenesis); and this recapitulation is the more complete in proportion as the original development (or palingenesis) is preserved by a constant heredity; on the other hand, it becomes less complete in proportion as a varying adaptation to new conditions increases the disturbing factors in the development (or cenogenesis).
The cenogenetic alterations or distortions of the original palingenetic course of development take the form, as a rule, of a gradual displacement of the phenomena, which is slowly effected by adaptation to the changed conditions of embryonic existence during the course of thousands of years. This displacement may take place as regards either the position or the time of a phenomenon.
The great importance and strict regularity of the time-variations in embryology have been carefully studied recently by Ernest Mehnert, in his Biomechanik (Jena, 1898). He contends that our biogenetic law has not been impaired by the attacks of its opponents, and goes on to say: "Scarcely any piece of knowledge has contributed so much to the advance of embryology as this; its formulation is one of the most signal services to general biology. It was not until this law pa.s.sed into the flesh and blood of investigators, and they had accustomed themselves to see a reminiscence of ancestral history in embryonic structures, that we witnessed the great progress which embryological research has made in the last two decades." The best proof of the correctness of this opinion is that now the most fruitful work is done in all branches of embryology with the aid of this biogenetic law, and that it enables students to attain every year thousands of brilliant results that they would never have reached without it.
It is only when one appreciates the cenogenetic processes in relation to the palingenetic, and when one takes careful account of the changes which the latter may suffer from the former, that the radical importance of the biogenetic law is recognised, and it is felt to be the most illuminating principle in the science of evolution. In this task of discrimination it is the silver thread in relation to which we can arrange all the phenomena of this realm of marvels--the "Ariadne thread," which alone enables us to find our way through this labyrinth of forms. Hence the brothers Sarasin, the zoologists, could say with perfect justice, in their study of the evolution of the Ichthyophis, that "the great biogenetic law is just as important for the zoologist in tracing long-extinct processes as spectrum a.n.a.lyses is for the astronomer."
Even at an earlier period, when a correct acquaintance with the evolution of the human and animal frame was only just being obtained--and that is scarcely eighty years ago!--the greatest astonishment was felt at the remarkable similarity observed between the embryonic forms, or stages of foetal development, in very different animals; attention was called even then to their close resemblance to certain fully-developed animal forms belonging to some of the lower groups. The older scientists (Oken, Trevira.n.u.s, and others) knew perfectly well that these lower forms in a sense ill.u.s.trated and fixed, in the hierarchy of the animal world, a temporary stage in the evolution of higher forms. The famous anatomist Meckel spoke in 1821 of a "similarity between the development of the embryo and the series of animals." Baer raised the question in 1828 how far, within the vertebrate type, the embryonic forms of the higher animals a.s.sume the permanent shapes of members of lower groups. But it was impossible fully to understand and appreciate this remarkable resemblance at that time. We owe our capacity to do this to the theory of descent; it is this that puts in their true light the action of heredity on the one hand and adaptation on the other. It explains to us the vital importance of their constant reciprocal action in the production of organic forms. Darwin was the first to teach us the great part that was played in this by the ceaseless struggle for existence between living things, and to show how, under the influence of this (by natural selection), new species were produced and maintained solely by the interaction of heredity and adaptation. It was thus Darwinism that first opened our eyes to a true comprehension of the supremely important relations between the two parts of the science of organic evolution--Ontogeny and Phylogeny.
Heredity and adaptation are, in fact, the two constructive physiological functions of living things; unless we understand these properly we can make no headway in the study of evolution. Hence, until the time of Darwin no one had a clear idea of the real nature and causes of embryonic development. It was impossible to explain the curious series of forms through which the human embryo pa.s.sed; it was quite unintelligible why this strange succession of animal-like forms appeared in the series at all. It had previously been generally a.s.sumed that the man was found complete in all his parts in the ovum, and that the development consisted only in an unfolding of the various parts, a simple process of growth. This is by no means the case. On the contrary, the whole process of the development of the individual presents to the observer a connected succession of different animal-forms; and these forms display a great variety of external and internal structure. But WHY each individual human being should pa.s.s through this series of forms in the course of his embryonic development it was quite impossible to say until Lamarck and Darwin established the theory of descent. Through this theory we have at last detected the real causes, the efficient causes, of the individual development; we have learned that these mechanical causes suffice of themselves to effect the formation of the organism, and that there is no need of the final causes which were formerly a.s.sumed. It is true that in the academic philosophies of our time these final causes still figure very prominently; in the new philosophy of nature we can entirely replace them by efficient causes. We shall see, in the course of our inquiry, how the most wonderful and hitherto insoluble enigmas in the human and animal frame have proved amenable to a mechanical explanation, by causes acting without prevision, through Darwin"s reform of the science of evolution. We have everywhere been able to subst.i.tute unconscious causes, acting from necessity, for conscious, purposive causes.* (* The monistic or mechanical philosophy of nature holds that only unconscious, necessary, efficient causes are at work in the whole field of nature, in organic life as well as in inorganic changes. On the other hand, the dualist or vitalist philosophy of nature affirms that unconscious forces are only at work in the inorganic world, and that we find conscious, purposive, or final causes in organic nature.)
If the new science of evolution had done no more than this, every thoughtful man would have to admit that it had accomplished an immense advance in knowledge. It means that in the whole of philosophy that tendency which we call monistic, in opposition to the dualistic, which has. .h.i.therto prevailed, must be accepted.* (* Monism is neither purely materialistic nor purely spiritualistic, but a reconciliation of these two principles, since it regards the whole of nature as one, and sees only efficient causes at work in it. Dualism, on the contrary, holds that nature and spirit, matter and force, the world and G.o.d, inorganic and organic nature, are separate and independent existences. Cf. The Riddle of the Universe chapter 12.) At this point the science of human evolution has a direct and profound bearing on the foundations of philosophy. Modern anthropology has, by its astounding discoveries during the second half of the nineteenth century, compelled us to take a completely monistic view of life. Our bodily structure and its life, our embryonic development and our evolution as a species, teach us that the same laws of nature rule in the life of man as in the rest of the universe. For this reason, if for no others, it is desirable, nay, indispensable, that every man who wishes to form a serious and philosophic view of life, and, above all, the expert philosopher, should acquaint himself with the chief facts of this branch of science.
The facts of embryology have so great and obvious a significance in this connection that even in recent years dualist and teleological philosophers have tried to rid themselves of them by simply denying them. This was done, for instance, as regards the fact that man is developed from an egg, and that this egg or ovum is a simple cell, as in the case of other animals. When I had explained this pregnant fact and its significance in my History of Creation, it was described in many of the theological journals as a dishonest invention of my own.
The fact that the embryos of man and the dog are, at a certain stage of their development, almost indistinguishable was also denied. When we examine the human embryo in the third or fourth week of its development, we find it to be quite different in shape and structure from the full-grown human being, but almost identical with that of the ape, the dog, the rabbit, and other mammals, at the same stage of ontogeny. We find a bean-shaped body of very simple construction, with a tail below and a pair of fins at the sides, something like those of a fish, but very different from the limbs of man and the mammals.
Nearly the whole front half of the body is taken up by a shapeless head without face, at the sides of which we find gill-clefts and arches as in the fish. At this stage of its development the human embryo does not differ in any essential detail from that of the ape, dog, horse, ox, etc., at a corresponding period. This important fact can easily be verified at any moment by a comparison of the embryos of man, the dog, rabbit, etc. Nevertheless, the theologians and dualist philosophers p.r.o.nounced it to be a materialistic invention; even scientists, to whom the facts should be known, have sought to deny them.
There could not be a clearer proof of the profound importance of these embryological facts in favour of the monistic philosophy than is afforded by these efforts of its opponents to get rid of them by silence or denial. The truth is that these facts are most inconvenient for them, and are quite irreconcilable with their views. We must be all the more pressing on our side to put them in their proper light. I fully agree with Huxley when he says, in his "Man"s Place in Nature": "Though these facts are ignored by several well-known popular leaders, they are easy to prove, and are accepted by all scientific men; on the other hand, their importance is so great that those who have once mastered them will, in my opinion, find few other biological discoveries to astonish them."
We shall make it our chief task to study the evolution of man"s bodily frame and its various organs in their external form and internal structures. But I may observe at once that this is accompanied step by step with a study of the evolution of their functions. These two branches of inquiry are inseparably united in the whole of anthropology, just as in zoology (of which the former is only a section) or general biology. Everywhere the peculiar form of the organism and its structures, internal and external, is directly related to the special physiological functions which the organism or organ has to execute. This intimate connection of structure and function, or of the instrument and the work done by it, is seen in the science of evolution and all its parts. Hence the story of the evolution of structures, which is our immediate concern, is also the history of the development of functions; and this holds good of the human organism as of any other.
At the same time, I must admit that our knowledge of the evolution of functions is very far from being as complete as our acquaintance with the evolution of structures. One might say, in fact, that the whole science of evolution has almost confined itself to the study of structures; the evolution of FUNCTIONS hardly exists even in name.
That is the fault of the physiologists, who have as yet concerned themselves very little about evolution. It is only in recent times that physiologists like W. Engelmann, W. Preyer, M. Verworn, and a few others, have attacked the evolution of functions.
It will be the task of some future physiologist to engage in the study of the evolution of functions with the same zeal and success as has been done for the evolution of structures in morphogeny (the science of the genesis of forms). Let me ill.u.s.trate the close connection of the two by a couple of examples. The heart in the human embryo has at first a very simple construction, such as we find in permanent form among the ascidiae and other low organisms; with this is a.s.sociated a very simple system of circulation of the blood. Now, when we find that with the full-grown heart there comes a totally different and much more intricate circulation, our inquiry into the development of the heart becomes at once, not only an anatomical, but also a physiological, study. Thus it is clear that the ontogeny of the heart can only be understood in the light of its phylogeny (or development in the past), both as regards function and structure. The same holds true of all the other organs and their functions. For instance, the science of the evolution of the alimentary ca.n.a.l, the lungs, or the s.e.xual organs, gives us at the same time, through the exact comparative investigation of structure-development, most important information with regard to the evolution of the functions of these organs.
This significant connection is very clearly seen in the evolution of the nervous system. This system is in the economy of the human body the medium of sensation, will, and even thought, the highest of the psychic functions; in a word, of all the various functions which const.i.tute the proper object of psychology. Modern anatomy and physiology have proved that these psychic functions are immediately dependent on the fine structure and the composition of the central nervous system, or the internal texture of the brain and spinal cord.
In these we find the elaborate cell-machinery, of which the psychic or soul-life is the physiological function. It is so intricate that most men still look upon the mind as something supernatural that cannot be explained on mechanical principles.
But embryological research into the gradual appearance and the formation of this important system of organs yields the most astounding and significant results. The first sketch of a central nervous system in the human embryo presents the same very simple type as in the other vertebrates. A spinal tube is formed in the external skin of the back, and from this first comes a simple spinal cord without brain, such as we find to be the permanent psychic organ in the lowest type of vertebrate, the amphioxus. Not until a later stage is a brain formed at the anterior end of this cord, and then it is a brain of the most rudimentary kind, such as we find permanently among the lower fishes. This simple brain develops step by step, successively a.s.suming forms which correspond to those of the amphibia, the reptiles, the duck-bills, and the lemurs. Only in the last stage does it reach the highly organised form which distinguishes the apes from the other vertebrates, and which attains its full development in man.
Comparative physiology discovers a precisely similar growth. The function of the brain, the psychic activity, rises step by step with the advancing development of its structure.
Thus we are enabled, by this story of the evolution of the nervous system, to understand at length THE NATURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN MIND and its gradual unfolding. It is only with the aid of embryology that we can grasp how these highest and most striking faculties of the animal organism have been historically evolved. In other words, a knowledge of the evolution of the spinal cord and brain in the human embryo leads us directly to a comprehension of the historic development (or phylogeny) of the human mind, that highest of all faculties, which we regard as something so marvellous and supernatural in the adult man. This is certainly one of the greatest and most pregnant results of evolutionary science. Happily our embryological knowledge of man"s central nervous system is now so adequate, and agrees so thoroughly with the complementary results of comparative anatomy and physiology, that we are thus enabled to obtain a clear insight into one of the highest problems of philosophy, the phylogeny of the soul, or the ancestral history of the mind of man. Our chief support in this comes from the embryological study of it, or the ontogeny of the soul. This important section of psychology owes its origin especially to W. Preyer, in his interesting works, such as The Mind of the Child. The Biography of a Baby (1900), of Milicent Washburn Shinn, also deserves mention. [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 pa.s.sed 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 1.2. 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical antiquity.
Aristotle studied embryological questions in various cla.s.ses 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 serra.n.u.s) 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 pa.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.trations and descriptions of the embryos of man and other mammals, and of the hen. Similar imperfect ill.u.s.trations 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 quant.i.ty, and the development of the chick may be followed step by step in artificial incubation. The development of the mammal is much more difficult to follow, because here the embryo is not detached and enclosed in a large egg, but the tiny ovum remains in the womb until the growth is completed. Hence, it is very difficult to keep up sustained observation of the various stages in any great extent, quite apart from such extrinsic considerations as the cost, the technical difficulties, and many other obstacles which we encounter when we would make an extensive study of the fertilised mammal. The chicken has, therefore, always been the chief object of study in this connection. The excellent incubators we now have enable us to observe it in any quant.i.ty and at any stage of development, and so follow the whole course of its formation step by step.
By the end of the seventeenth century Malpighi had advanced as far as it was possible to do with the imperfect microscope of his time in the embryological study of the chick. Further progress was arrested until the instrument and the technical methods should be improved. The vertebrate embryos are so small and delicate in their earlier stages that you cannot go very far into the study of them without a good microscope and other technical aid. But this substantial improvement of the microscope and the other apparatus did not take place until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Embryology made scarcely any advance in the first half of the eighteenth century, when the systematic natural history of plants and animals received so great an impulse through the publication of Linne"s famous Systema Naturae. Not until 1759 did the genius arise who was to give it an entirely new character, Caspar Friedrich Wolff.