The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

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Universality of Inheritance and Transmission by Inheritance.—Special Evidences of the same.—Human Beings with four, six, or seven Fingers and Toes.—Porcupine Men.—Transmission of Diseases, especially Diseases of the Mind.—Original Sin.—Hereditary Monarchies.—Hereditary Aristocracy.—Hereditary Talents and Mental Qualities.—Material Causes of Transmission by Inheritance.—Connection between Transmission by Inheritance and Propagation.—Spontaneous Generation and Propagation.—Non-sexual or Monogonous Propagation.—Propagation by Self-Division.—Monera and Amœbæ.—Propagation by the formation of Buds, by the formation of Germ-Buds, by the formation of Germ-Cells.—Sexual or Amphigonous Propagation.—Formation of Hermaphrodites.—Distinction of Sexes, or Gonochorism.—Virginal Breeding, or Parthenogenesis.—Material Transmission of Peculiarities of both Parents to the Child by Sexual Propagation.—Difference between Transmission by Inheritance in Sexual and in Asexual Propagation.

The reader has, in the last chapter, become acquainted with natural selection according to Darwin’s theory, as the constructive force of nature which produces the different forms of animal and vegetable species. By natural selection we understand the interaction which takes place in the struggle for life between the transmission by inheritance and the mutability of organisms, between two physiological functions which are innate in all animals and plants,176 and which may be traced to other processes of life—the functions of propagation and nutrition. All the different forms of organisms, which people are usually inclined to look upon as the products of a creative power, acting for a definite purpose, we, according to the Theory of Selection, can conceive as the necessary productions of natural selection, working without a purpose,—as the unconscious interaction between the two properties of Mutability and Hereditivity. Considering the importance which accordingly belongs to these vital properties of organisms, we must examine them a little more closely, and employ a chapter with the consideration of Transmission by Inheritance. (Gen. Morph. ii. 170-191.)

Strictly speaking, we must distinguish between Hereditivity (Transmissivity) and Inheritance (Transmission). Hereditivity is the power of transmission, the capability of organisms to transfer their peculiarities to their descendants by propagation. Transmission by Inheritance, or Inheritance simply, on the other hand, denotes the exercise of the capability, the actual transmission.

Hereditivity and Transmission by Inheritance are such universal, everyday phenomena, that most people do not heed them, and but few are inclined to reflect upon the operation and import of these phenomena of life. It is generally thought quite natural and self-evident that every organism should produce its like, and that children should more or less resemble their parents. Heredity is usually only taken notice of and discussed in cases relating to some special peculiarity, which appears for the first time in a human individual without having been inherited, and then is transmitted to his descendants. It shows177 itself in a specially striking manner in the case of certain diseases, and in unusual and irregular (monstrous) deviations from the usual formation of the body.

Among these cases of the inheritance of monstrous deviations, those are specially interesting which consist in an abnormal increase or decrease of the number five in the fingers or toes of man. It is not unfrequently observed in families through several generations, that individuals have six fingers on each hand, or six toes on each foot. Less frequent is the number of four or seven fingers or toes. The unusual formation arises at first from a single individual who, from unknown causes, is born with an excess of the usual number of fingers and toes, and transmits these, by inheritance, to a portion of his descendants. In one and the same family it has happened that, throughout three, four, or more generations, individuals have possessed six fingers and toes. In a Spanish family there were no less than forty individuals distinguished by this excess. The transmission of the sixth finger or toe is not permanent or enduring in all cases, because six-fingered people always intermarry again with those possessing five fingers. If a six-fingered family were to propagate by pure in-breeding, if six-fingered men were always to marry six-fingered women, this characteristic would become permanent, and a special six-fingered human race would arise. But as six-fingered men usually marry five-fingered women, and vice versâ, their descendants for the most part show a very mixed numerical relation, and finally, after the course of some generations, revert again to the normal number of five. Thus, for example, among eight children of a six-fingered father and a five-fingered mother, two children may have on both hands and feet six fingers178 and toes, four children may have a mixed number, and two children may have the usual number of five on both hands and feet. In a Spanish family, each child except the youngest had the number six on both hands and feet; the youngest, only, had the usual number on both hands and feet, and the six-fingered father of the child refused to recognize the last one as his own.

The power of inheritance, moreover, shows itself very strikingly in the formation and colour of the human skin and hair. It is well known how exactly the nature of the complexion in many families—for instance, a peculiar soft or rough skin, a peculiar luxuriance of the hair, a peculiar colour and largeness of the eyes—is transmitted through many generations. In like manner, peculiar local growths or spots on the skin, the so-called moles, freckles, and other accumulations of pigment which appear in certain places, are frequently transmitted through several generations so exactly, that in the descendants they appear on the same spots on which they existed in the parents. The porcupine men of the Lambert family, who lived in London last century, are especially celebrated. Edward Lambert, born in 1717, was remarkable for a most unusual and monstrous formation of the skin. His whole body was covered with a horny substance, about an inch thick, which rose in the form of numerous thorn-shaped and scale-like processes, more than an inch long. This monstrous formation of the outer skin, or epidermis, was transmitted by Lambert to his sons and grandsons, but not to his granddaughters. The transmission in this instance remained in the male line, as is often the case. In like manner, an excessive development of fat in certain parts of the body is often transmitted179 only in the female line. I scarcely need call to mind how exactly the characteristic formation of the face is transmitted by inheritance; sometimes it remains within the male, sometimes within the female line; sometimes it is blended in both.

The phenomena of transmission by inheritance of pathological conditions, especially of the different forms of human diseases, are very instructive and generally known. Diseases of the respiratory organs, the glands, and of the nervous system, are specially liable to be transmitted by inheritance. Very frequently there suddenly appears in an otherwise healthy family a disease until then unknown among them; it is produced by external causes, by conditions of life causing disease. This disease, brought about in an individual by external cause, is propagated and transmitted to his descendants, and some or all of them then suffer from the same disease. In case of diseases of the lungs, for instance in consumption, this sad transmission by inheritance is well known, and it is the same with diseases of the liver, with syphilis, and diseases of the mind. The latter are specially interesting. Just as peculiar characteristic features of man—pride, ambition, frivolity, etc.—are transmitted to the descendants strictly by inheritance, so too are the peculiar abnormal manifestations of mental activity, which are usually called fixed ideas, despondency, imbecility, and generally “diseases of the mind.” This distinctly and irrefragably shows that the soul of man, just as the soul of animals, is a purely mechanical activity, the sum of the molecular phenomena of motion in the particles of the brain, and that it is transmitted by inheritance, together with its substratum, just as every other quality of the body is materially transmitted by propagation.180

When this exceedingly important and undeniable fact is mentioned, it generally causes great offence, and yet in reality it is silently and universally acknowledged. For upon what else do the ideas of “hereditary sin,” “hereditary wisdom,” and “hereditary aristocracy,” etc., rest than upon the conviction that the quality of the human mind is transmitted by propagation—that is, by a purely material process—through the body, from the parents to the descendants? The recognition of this great importance of transmission by inheritance is shown in a number of human institutions, as for example, among many nations in the division into castes, such as the castes of warriors, castes of priests, and castes of labourers, etc. It is evident that the institution of such castes originally arose from the notion of the great importance of hereditary distinctions possessed by certain families, which it was presumed would always be transmitted by the parents to the children. The institution of an hereditary aristocracy and an hereditary monarchy is to be traced to the notion of such a transmission of special excellencies. However, it is unfortunately not only virtues, but also vices that are transmitted and accumulated by inheritance; and if, in the history of the world, we compare the different individuals of the different dynasties, we shall everywhere find a great number of proofs of the transmission of qualities by inheritance, but fewer of transmissions of virtues than of vices. Look only, for example, at the Roman emperors, at the Julii and the Claudii, or at the Bourbons in France, Spain, and Italy!

In fact, scarcely anywhere could we find such a number of striking examples of the remarkable transmission of bodily and mental features by inheritance, as in the history181 of the reigning houses in hereditary monarchies. This is specially true in regard to the diseases of the mind previously mentioned. It is in reigning families that mental disorders are hereditary in an unusual degree. Thus Esquirol, distinguished for his knowledge of mental diseases, proved that the number of insane individuals in the reigning houses was, in proportion to the number among the ordinary population, as 60 to 1; that is, that disorders of the brain occur 60 times more frequently in the privileged families of the ruling houses than among ordinary people. If equally accurate statistics were made of the hereditary nobility, the result would probably be that here also we should find an incomparably larger contingent of mental diseases than among the common, ignoble portion of mankind. This phenomenon can scarcely astonish us if we consider what injury these privileged castes inflict upon themselves by their unnatural, one-sided education, and by their artificial separation from the rest of mankind. By this means many dark sides of human nature are specially developed and, as it were, artificially bred, and, according to the laws of transmission by inheritance, are propagated through series of generations with ever-increasing force and dominance.

It is sufficiently obvious from the history of nations how in successive generations of many dynasties, for example, of the princes of Saxon Thuringia and of the Medici, the noble solicitude for the most perfect human accomplishments in science and art were retained and transmitted from father to son; and how, on the other hand, in many other dynasties, for centuries a special partiality for the profession of war, for the oppression of human freedom, and for other rude acts of violence, have been hereditary. In like182 manner talents for special mental activities are transmitted in many families for generations, as, for instance, talent for mathematics, poetry, music, sculpture, the investigation of nature, philosophy, etc. In the family of Bach there have been no less than twenty-two eminent musicians. Of course the transmission of such peculiarities of mind depends upon the material process of reproduction, as does the transmission of mental qualities in general. In this case again, the vital phenomenon, the manifestation of force (as everywhere in nature), is directly connected with definite relations in the admixture of the material components of the organism. It is this definite proportion and molecular motion of matter which is transmitted by generation.

Now, before we examine the numerous, and in some cases most interesting and important, laws of transmission by inheritance, let us make ourselves acquainted with the actual nature of the process. The phenomena of transmission by inheritance are generally looked upon as something quite mysterious, as peculiar processes which cannot be fathomed by natural science, and the causes and actual nature of which cannot be understood. It is precisely in such a case that people very generally assume supernatural influences. But even in the present state of our physiology it can be proved with complete certainty that all the phenomena of inheritance are entirely natural processes, that they are produced by mechanical causes, and that they depend on the material phenomena of motion in the bodies of organisms, which we may consider as a part of the phenomena of propagation. All the phenomena of Heredity and the laws of Transmission by Inheritance can be traced to the material process of Propagation.

183Every organism, every living individual, owes its existence either to an act of unparental or Spontaneous Generation (Generatio Spontanea, Archigonia), or to an act of Parental Generation or Propagation (Generatio Parentalis, Tocogonia). In a future chapter we shall have to consider Spontaneous Generation, or Archigony. At present we must occupy ourselves with Propagation, or Tocogony, a closer examination of which is of the utmost importance for understanding transmission by inheritance. Most of my readers probably only know those phenomena of Propagation which are seen universally in the higher plants and animals, the processes of Sexual Propagation, or Amphigony. The processes of Non-sexual Propagation, or Monogony, are much less generally known. The latter, however, are far more suited to throw light upon the nature of transmission by inheritance in connection with propagation.

For this reason, we shall first consider only the phenomena of non-sexual or monogonic propagation (Monogonia). This appears in a variety of different forms, as for example, self-division, formation of buds, the formation of germ-cells or spores (Gen. Morph. ii. 36-58). It will be most instructive, first, to examine the propagation of the simplest organisms known to us, which we shall have to return to later, when considering the question of spontaneous generation. These very simplest of all organisms yet known, and which, at the same time, are the simplest imaginable organisms, are the Monera living in water; they are very small living corpuscles, which, strictly speaking, do not at all deserve the name of organism. For the designation “organism,” applied to living creatures, rests upon the idea that every living natural body is composed 184 of organs, of various parts, which fit into one another and work together (as do the different parts of an artificial machine), in order to produce the action of the whole. During late years we have become acquainted with Monera, organisms which are, in fact, not composed of any organs at all, but consist entirely of shapeless, simple, homogeneous matter. The entire body of one of these Monera, during life, is nothing more than a shapeless, mobile, little lump of mucus or slime, consisting of an albuminous combination of carbon. Simpler or more imperfect organisms we cannot possibly conceive.

The first complete observations on the natural history of a Moneron (Protogenes primordialis) were made by me at Nice, in 1864. Other very remarkable Monera I examined later (1866) in Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, and in 1867 in the Straits of Gibraltar. The complete history of one of these Monera, the orange-red Protomyxa aurantiaca, is represented in Plate I, and its explanation is given in the Appendix. I have found some curious Monera also in the North Sea, off the Norwegian coast, near Bergen. Cienkowski has described (1865) an interesting Moneron from fresh waters, under the name of Vampyrella. But perhaps the most remarkable of all Monera was discovered by Huxley, the celebrated English zoologist, and called Bathybius Hæckelii. “Bathybius” means, living in the deep. This wonderful organism lives in immense depths of the ocean, which are over 12,000—indeed, in some parts 24,000 feet below the surface, and which have become known to us within the last ten years, through the laborious investigations made by the English. There, among the numerous Polythalamia and 185 Radiolaria which inhabit the fine calcareous mud of these abysses, the Bathybius is found in great quantities, sometimes in the shape of roundish, formless lumps of mucus, sometimes in the form of a network of mucus, covering fragments of stone and other objects. Small particles of chalk are frequently embedded in these mucous gelatinous masses, and are, perhaps, products of their secretion. The entire body of this remarkable Bathybius consists solely of shapeless plasma, or protoplasm, as in the case of the other Monera—that is, it consists of the same albuminous combination of carbon, which in infinite modifications is found in all organisms, as the essential and never-failing seat of the phenomena of life. I have given a detailed description and drawing of the Bathybius and other Monera in my “Monographie der Moneren,” 1870,(15) from which the drawing in Fig. 9 is taken.

Life history of a simplest organism. Pl. I.
Life history of a simplest organism.
E. Haeckel del. Prototmyxa aurantiaca. Lagesse sc.

In a state of rest most Monera appear as small globules of mucus or slime, invisible, or nearly so, to the naked eye; they are at most as large as a pin’s head. When the Moneron moves itself, there are formed on the upper surface of the little mucous globule, shapeless, fingerlike processes, or very fine radiated threads; these are the so-called false feet, or pseudopodia. The false feet are simple, direct continuations of the shapeless albuminous mass, of which the whole body consists. We are unable to perceive different parts in it, and we can give a direct proof of the absolute simplicity of the semi-fluid mass of albumen, for with the aid of the microscope we can follow the Moneron as it takes in nourishment. When small particles suited for its nourishment—for instance, small particles of decayed organic bodies or microscopic plants and infusoria—accidentally 186 come into contact with the Moneron, they remain hanging to the sticky semi-fluid globule of mucus, and here create an irritation, which is followed by a strong afflux of the mucous substance, and, in consequence, they become finally completely inclosed by it, or are drawn into the body of the Moneron by displacement of the several albuminous particles, and are there digested, being absorbed by simple diffusion (endosmosis).

Propagation of the simplest organism, a Moneron, by self-division.
Fig. 1.—Propagation of the simplest organism, a Moneron, by self-division. A. The entire Moneron, a Protamœba. B. It falls into two halves by a contraction in the middle. C. Each of the two halves has separated from the other, and now represents an independent individual.

Just as simple as the process of nutrition is the propagation of these primitive creatures, which in reality we can neither call animals nor plants. All Monera propagate themselves only in an asexual manner by monogony; and in the simplest case, by that kind of monogony which we place at the head of the different forms of propagation, that is, by self-division. When such a little globule, for example a Protamœba or a Protogenes, has attained a certain size by the assimilation of foreign albuminous matter, it falls into two pieces; a pinching in takes place, contracting the middle of the globule on all sides, and finally leads to the separation of the two halves (compare Fig. 1). Each half187 then becomes rounded off, and now appears as an independent individual, which commences anew the simple course of the vital phenomena of nutrition and propagation. In other Monera (Vampyrella), the body in the process of propagation does not fall into two, but into four equal pieces, and in others, again (Protomonas, Protomyxa, Myxastrum), at once into a number of small globules of mucus, each of which again, by simple growth, becomes like the parent body. Here it is evident that the process of propagation is nothing but a growth of the organism beyond its own individual limit of size.

The simple method of propagation of the Moneron by self-division is, in reality, the most universal and most widely spread of all the different modes of propagation; for by the same simple process of division, cells also propagate themselves. Cells are those simple organic individuals, a large number of which constitute the bodies of most organisms, the human body not excepted. With the exception of the organisms of the lowest order, which have not even the perfect form of a cell (Monera), or during life only represent a single cell (many Protista and single-celled plants), the body of every organic individual is composed of a great number of cells. Every organic cell is to a certain degree an independent organism, a so-called “elementary organism,” or an “individual of the first order.” Every higher organism is, in a measure, a society or a state of such variously shaped elementary individuals, variously developed by division of labour.(39) Originally every organic cell is only a single globule of mucus, like a Moneron, but differing from it in the fact that the homogeneous albuminous substance has separated itself into two different parts, a firmer albuminous 188 body, the cell-kernel (nucleus), and an external, softer albuminous body, the cell-substance or body (protoplasma). Besides this, many cells later on form a third (frequently absent) distinct part, inasmuch as they cover themselves with a capsule, by exuding an outer pellicle or cell-membrane (membrana). All other forms of cells, besides these, are of subordinate importance, and are of no further interest to us here.

Every organism composed of many cells was originally a single cell, and it becomes many-celled owing to the fact that the original cell propagates itself by self-division, and that the new individual cells originating in this manner remain together, and by division of labour form a community or a state. The forms and vital phenomena of all many-celled organisms are merely the effect or the expression of all the forms and vital phenomena of all the individual cells of which they are composed. The egg, from which most animals and plants are developed, is a simple cell.

Propagation of a single-celled organism
Fig. 2.—Propagation of a single-celled organism, Amœba sphærococcus, by self-division. A. The enclosed Amœba, a simple globular cell consisting of a lump of protoplasm (c), which contains a kernel (b) and a kernel speck (a), and is surrounded by a cell-membrane or capsule. B. The free Amœba, which has burst and left the cyst or cell-membrane. C. It begins to divide by its kernel forming two kernels, and by the cell-substance between the two becoming contracted. D. The division is completed by the cell-substance likewise falling into two halves (Da and Db).

The single-celled organisms, that is, those which during life retain the form of a single cell, for example the Amœbæ, as a rule propagate themselves in the simplest way by self-division. This process differs from the previously described self-division of the Moneron only in the fact that at the commencement the firmer cell-kernel (nucleus) falls into two halves, by a pinching in at its middle. The two young kernels separate from each other and act now as two distinct centres of attraction upon the surrounding softer albuminous matter, that is, the cell-substance (protoplasma). By this process finally the latter also divides into two halves, and there now exist two new cells, which are like the mother cell. If the cell was surrounded by a membrane, this either does not divide at all, as in the case of egg-cleavage (Fig. 3, 4), or it passively follows the active pinching in of the protoplasm; or, lastly, every new cell exudes a new membrane for itself.

Egg of a mammal (a simple cell).
Fig. 3.—Egg of a mammal (a simple cell). a. The small kernel speck or nucleolus (the so-called germ-spot of the egg). b. Kernel or nucleus (the so-called germ-bladder of the egg). c. Cell-substance or protoplasm (the so-called yolk of the egg). d. Cell-capsule or membrane (membrane of the yolk) of the egg; called in mammals, on account of its transparency, Membrana pellucida.

The non-independent cells which remain united in communities or states, and thus constitute the body of higher organisms, are propagated in the same manner as are independent single-celled organisms, for example, Amœba (Fig. 2). Just as in that case, the cell with which most animals and plants commence their individual existence, namely, the egg, multiplies itself by simple division. When an animal, for instance a mammal (Fig. 3, 4), develops out of an190 egg, this process of development always begins by the simple egg-cell (Fig. 3) forming an accumulation of cells (Fig. 4) by continued self-division. The outer covering, or cell membrane, of the globular egg remains undivided. First, the cell-kernel of the egg (the so-called germinal vesicle) divides itself into two kernels, then follows the cell-substance (the yolk of the egg) (Fig. 4 A). In like manner, the two cells, by continued self-division, separate into four (Fig. 4 B), these into eight (Fig. 4 C), into sixteen, thirty-two, etc., and finally there is produced a globular mass of very numerous little cells (Fig. 4 D). These now, by further increase and heterogeneous development (division of labour), gradually build up the compound many-celled organism. Every one of us, at the commencement of our individual development, has undergone the very same process as that represented in Fig. 4. The egg of a mammal—represented in Fig. 3, and its development in Fig. 4—might as well be that of a man, as of an ape, dog, horse, or any other placental mammal.

First commencement of the development of a mammal’s egg.
Fig. 4.—First commencement of the development of a mammal’s egg, the so-called “cleavage of the egg” (propagation of the egg-cell by repeated self-division). A. The egg, by the formation of the first furrow, falls into two cells. B. These separate by division into four cells. C. The latter have divided into eight cells. D. By repeated division a globular accumulation of numerous cells has arisen.

Now, when one examines this simplest form of propagation, this self-division, it surely cannot be considered wonderful that the products of the division of the original organism should possess the same qualities as the parental individual. For they are parts or halves of the parental organism, and the matter or substance in both halves is the same, and as both the young individuals have received an equal amount and the same quality of matter from the parent individual, one can but consider it natural that the vital phenomena, the physiological qualities should be the same in both children. In fact, in regard to their form and substance, as well as to their vital phenomena, the two produced cells can in no respect be distinguished from one another, or from the mother cell. They have inherited from her the same nature.

But this same simple propagation by self-division is not only confined to simple cells—it is the same also in the higher many-celled organisms; for example, in the coral zoophytes. Many of them which exhibit a high complexity of composition and organization, nevertheless, propagate themselves by simple division. In this case the whole organism, with all its organs, falls into two equal halves as soon as by growth it has attained a certain size. Each half again develops itself, by growth, into a complete individual. Here, again, it is surely self-evident that the two products of division will share the qualities of the parental organism, as they themselves are in fact halves of that parent.

Next to propagation by division we come to propagation by the formation of buds. This kind of monogony is exceedingly widely spread. It occurs both in the case of simple cells (though not frequently) and in the higher organisms 192 composed of many cells. The formation of buds is universal in the vegetable kingdom, less frequent in the animal kingdom. However, here also it occurs in the tribe of Plant-like Animals, especially among the Coral Zoophytes, and among the greater portion of the Hydroid Polyps very frequently, further also among some worms (Planarian Worms, Ring-Worms, Moss Animals, Tunicates). Most branching animal-trees or colonies, which are exceedingly like branching plants, arise like those plants, by the formation of buds.

Propagation by the formation of buds (Gemmatio) is essentially distinguished from propagation by division, in the fact that the two organisms thus produced by budding are not of equal age, and therefore at first are not of equal value, as they are in the case of division. In division we cannot clearly distinguish either of the two newly produced individuals as the parental, that is as the producer, because, in fact, both have an equal share in the composition of the original parental individual. If, on the other hand, an organism sends out a bud, then the latter is the child of the former. The two individuals are of unequal size and of unequal form. If, for instance, a cell propagates itself by the formation of buds, we do not see the cell fall into two equal halves, but there appears at one point of it a protuberance, which becomes larger and larger, more or less separates itself from the parental cell, and then grows independently. In like manner we observe in the budding of a plant or animal, that a small local growth arises on a part of the mature individual, which growth becomes larger and larger, and likewise more or less separates itself from the parental organism by an independence in its growth. The bud, after193 it has attained a certain size, may either completely separate itself from the parental individual, or it may remain connected with it and form a stock or colony, whilst at the same time its life may be quite independent of that of its parent. While the growth which starts the propagation, in the case of self-division, is a total one affecting the whole body, it is in the formation of buds only partial, affecting merely a portion of the parental organism. But here, also, the bud—the newly-produced individual which remains so long most directly connected with the parental organism, and which proceeds from it—retains the essential qualities and the original tendency of development of its parent.

A third mode of non-sexual propagation, that of the formation of germ-buds (Polysporogonia), is intimately connected with the formation of buds. In the case of the lower, imperfect organisms, among animals, especially in the case of the Plant-like animals and Worms, we very frequently find that in the interior of an individual composed of many cells, a small group of cells separates itself from those surrounding it, and that this small isolated group gradually develops itself into an individual, which, becomes like the parent, and sooner or later comes out of it. Thus, for example, in the body of the Fluke-worms (Trematodes) there often arise numerous little bodies consisting of many cells, that is germ-buds, or polyspores, which, at an early stage separate themselves completely from the parent body, and leave it when they have attained a certain stage of development.

The formation of germ-buds is evidently but little different from real budding. But, on the other hand, it is connected with a fourth kind of non-sexual propagation, which almost194 forms a transition to sexual reproduction, namely, the formation of germ-cells (Monosporogonia), which is often briefly called formation of spores (sporogonia). In this case it is no longer a group of cells, but a single cell, which separates itself from the surrounding cells in the interior of the producing organism, and which only becomes further developed after it has come out of its parent. After this germ-cell, or monospore (or, briefly, spore), has left the parental individual, it multiplies by division, and thus forms a many-celled organism, which by growth and gradual development attains the hereditary qualities of the parental organism. This occurs very generally among lower plants (Cryptogama).

Although the formation of germ-cells very much resembles the formation of germ buds, it evidently and very essentially differs from the latter, and also from the other forms of non-sexual propagation which have previously been mentioned, by the fact that only a very small portion of the producing organism takes part in the propagation and, accordingly, in the transmission by inheritance. In the case of self-division, where the whole organism falls into two halves, in the formation of buds, where a considerable portion of the whole body, already more or less developed, separates from the producing individual, we easily understand that the forms and vital phenomena should be the same in the producing and produced organism. It is much more difficult to understand in the formation of germ-buds, and more difficult still in the formation of germ-cells, how this very small, quite undeveloped portion of the body, this group of cells, or this single cell, not only directly takes with it certain parental qualities into its independent existence, but also after its195 separation from the parental individual develops into a many-celled body, and in this repeats the forms and vital phenomena of the original producing organism. This last form of monogonic propagation—that of the germ cells, or spore-formation—leads us directly to a form of propagation which is the most difficult of all to explain, namely, sexual propagation.

Sexual or amphigonic propagation (Amphigonia) is the usual method of propagation among all higher animals and plants. It is evident that it has only developed, at a very late period of the earth’s history, from non-sexual propagation, and apparently in the first instance from the method of propagation by germ-cells. In the earliest periods of the organic history of the earth, all organisms propagated themselves in a non-sexual manner, as numerous lower organisms still do, especially all those which are at the lowest stage of organization, and which, strictly speaking, can be considered neither as animals nor as plants, and which therefore, as primary creatures, or Protista, are best excluded from both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In the case of the higher animals and plants, the increase of individuals, as a rule, is at present brought about in the majority of cases by sexual propagation.

In all the chief forms of non-sexual propagation mentioned above—in fission, in the formation of buds, germ buds, and germ cells—the separated cell or group of cells was able by itself to develop into a new individual, but in the case of sexual propagation the cell must first be fructified by another generative substance. The fructifying male sperm must first mix with the female germ-cell (the egg) before the latter can develop into a new individual. These two196 different generative substances, the male sperm and the female egg, are either produced by one and the same individual hermaphrodite (Hermaphroditismus), or by two different individuals (sexual separation, Gonochorismus) (Gen. Morph. ii. 58, 59).

The simpler and more ancient form of sexual propagation is through double-sexed individuals (Hermaphroditismus). It occurs in the great majority of plants, but only in a minority of animals, for example, in the garden snails, leeches, earth-worms, and many other worms. Every single individual among hermaphrodites produces within itself materials of both sexes—eggs and sperm. In most of the higher plants every blossom contains both the male organ (stamens and anther) and the female organs (style and germ). Every garden snail produces in one part of its sexual gland eggs, and in another part sperm. Many hermaphrodites can fructify themselves; in others, however, copulation and reciprocal fructification of both hermaphrodites is necessary for causing the development of the eggs. This latter case is evidently a transition to sexual separation.

Sexual separation (Gonochorismus,) which characterizes the more complicated of the two kinds of sexual reproduction, has evidently been developed from the condition of hermaphroditism at a late period of the organic history of the world. It is at present the universal method of propagation of the higher animals, and occurs, on the other hand, only in the minority of plants (for example, in many aquatic plants, e.g. Hydrocharis, Vallisneria; and in trees, e.g. Willows, Poplars). Every organic individual, as a non-hermaphrodite (Gonochoristus), produces within itself only197 one of two generative substances, either the male or the female. The female individuals, both in animals and plants, produce eggs or egg-cells. The eggs of plants in the case of flowering plants (Phanerogama), are commonly called “embryo sacs”; in the case of flowerless plants (Cryptogama), “fruit spores.” In animals, the male individual secretes the fructifying sperm (sperma); in plants, the corpuscles, which correspond to the sperm. In the Phanerogama, these are the pollen grains, or flower-dust; in the Cryptogama, a sperm, which, like that of most animals, consists of floating vibratile cells actively moving in a fluid—the zoosperms, spermatozoa, or sperm-cells.

The so-called virginal reproduction (Parthenogenesis) offers an interesting form of transition from sexual reproduction to the non-sexual formation of germ-cells (which most resembles it); it has been demonstrated to occur in many cases among Insects, especially by Siebold’s excellent investigations. In this case germ-cells, which otherwise appear and are formed exactly like egg-cells, become capable of developing themselves into new individuals without requiring the fructifying seed. The most remarkable and most instructive of the different partheno-genetic phenomena are furnished by those cases in which the same germ-cells, according as they are fructified or not, produce different kinds of individuals. Among our common honey bees, a male individual (a drone) arises out of the eggs of the queen, if the egg has not been fructified; a female (a queen, or working bee), if the egg has been fructified. It is evident from this, that in reality there exists no wide chasm between sexual and non-sexual reproduction, but that both modes of reproduction are directly198 connected. The parthenogenesis of Insects must probably be regarded as a relapse from the sexual mode of propagation (possessed by the original parents of the insects) to the earlier condition of non-sexual propagation. (Gen. Morph. ii. 86.) In any case, however, sexual reproduction, both in plants and animals, which seems such a wonderful process, has only arisen at a later date out of the more ancient process of non-sexual reproduction. In both cases heredity is a necessary part of the phenomenon.

In all the different modes of propagation the essential point of the process is invariably a detachment of a portion of the parental organism possessing the capability of leading an individual, independent existence. We may, therefore, in all cases expect, à priori, that the produced individuals—which are, in fact, as is commonly said, “the flesh and blood” of the parents—will receive the vital characteristics and qualities of form which the parental individuals possess. It is simply a larger or smaller quantity of the parental material, in fact of its albuminous protoplasm, or cell-substance, which passes to the produced individual. But together with the material, its vital properties—that is, the molecular motions of the plasma—are transmitted, which then manifest themselves in its form. Inheritance by sexual breeding loses very much of the mysterious and wonderful character which it at first sight possesses for the uninitiated, if we consider the above-mentioned series of the different modes of propagation, and their connection one with another. It at first appears exceedingly wonderful that in the sexual propagation of man, and of all higher animals, the small egg, the minute cell, often invisible to the naked eye, is able to transfer to the produced organism all the qualities199 of the maternal organism, and, no less mysterious, that at the same time the essential qualities of the paternal organism are transferred to the offspring by means of the male sperm, which fructifies the egg-cell by means of a viscid substance in which minute thread-like cells or zoosperms move about. But as soon as we compare the connected stages of the different kinds of propagation, in which the produced organism separates itself more and more as a distinct growth from the parental individual, and more or less early enters upon its independent career; as soon as we consider, at the same time, that the growth and development of every higher organism only depends upon the increase of the cells composing it—that is, upon their simple propagation by division—it becomes quite evident that all these remarkable processes belong to one series.

The life of every organic individual is nothing but a connected chain of very complicated material phenomena of motion. These motions must be considered as changes in the position and combination of the molecules, that is, of the smallest particles of animated matter (of atoms placed together in the most varied manner). The specific, definite tendency of these orderly, continuous, and inherent motions of life depends, in every organism, upon the chemical mingling of the albuminous generative matter to which it owes its origin. In man, as in the case of the higher animals which propagate themselves in a sexual manner, the individual vital motion commences at the moment in which the egg-cell is fructified by the spermatic filaments of the seed, in which process both generative substances actually mix; and here the tendency of the vital motion is determined by the specific, or more200 accurately, by the individual nature of the sperm as well as of the egg. There can be no doubt as to the purely mechanical material nature of this process. But here we stand full of wonder and astonishment before the infinite and inconceivable delicacy of this albuminous matter. We are amazed at the undeniable fact that the simple egg-cell of the maternal organism, and a single paternal sperm-thread, transfer the molecular individual vital motion of these two individuals to the child so accurately, that afterwards the minutest bodily and mental peculiarities of both parents reappear in it.

Here we stand before a mechanical phenomenon of nature of which Virchow, whose genius founded the “cellular pathology,” says with full justice: “If the naturalist cared to follow the custom of historians and preachers, and to clothe phenomena, which are in their way unique, with the hollow pomp of ponderous and sounding words, this would be the opportunity for him; for we have now approached one of those great mysteries of animal nature, which encircle the region of animal life as opposed to all the rest of the world of phenomena. The question of the formation of cells, the question of the excitation of a continuous and equable motion, and, finally, the questions of the independence of the nervous system and of the soul—these are the great problems on which the human mind can measure its strength.” To comprehend the relation of the male and female to the egg-cell is almost as much as to solve all those mysteries. The origin and development of the egg-cell in the mother’s body, the transmission of the bodily and mental peculiarities of the father to it by his seed, touch upon all the questions which the human201 mind has ever raised about man’s existence. And, we add, these most important questions are solved, by means of the Theory of Descent, in a purely mechanical and purely monistic sense!

There can then be no further doubt that, in the sexual propagation of man and all higher organisms, inheritance, which is a purely mechanical process, is directly dependent upon the material continuity of the producing and produced organism, just as is the case in the simplest non-sexual propagation of the lower organisms. However, I must at once take this opportunity of drawing attention to an important difference which inheritance presents in sexual and non-sexual propagation. It is a fact long since acknowledged, that the individual peculiarities of the producing organism are much more accurately transmitted to the produced organism by non-sexual than by sexual propagation. Gardeners have for a long time made use of this fact in many ways. When, for instance, a single individual of a species of tree with stiff, upright branches accidentally produces down-hanging branches, a gardener, as a rule, cannot transmit this peculiarity by sexual, but only by non-sexual propagation. The twigs cut off such a weeping tree and planted as cuttings or slips, afterwards produce trees having likewise hanging branches, as, for example, the weeping willows and beeches. Seedlings, on the other hand, which have been reared out of the seed of such a weeping tree, generally have the original stiff and upright form of branches possessed by their ancestors. The same may be observed in a very striking manner in the so-called “copper-coloured trees,” that is, varieties of trees which are characterized by a red or reddish brown202 colour of the leaves. Off-shoots from such copper-coloured trees (for example, the copper beech), which have been propagated by cuttings in a non-sexual manner, show the peculiar colour and nature of the leaves which distinguished the parental individual, while others reared from seeds of such a copper-coloured tree return to the green-coloured condition of leaf.

This difference in inheritance will seem very natural when we consider that the material connection between the producing and produced individuals is much closer and lasts much longer in non-sexual than in sexual propagation. The special tendency of the molecular motion of life can therefore fix itself much longer and more thoroughly in the filial organism, and be more strictly transmitted by non-sexual than by sexual propagation. All these phenomena, considered in connection, clearly prove that the transmission of bodily and mental peculiarities is a purely material and mechanical process. By propagation a greater or lesser quantity of albuminous particles, and together with them the individual form of motion inherent in these molecules of protoplasm, are transmitted from the parental organism to the offspring. As this form of motion remains continuous, the more delicate peculiarities inherent in the parental organism must sooner or later reappear in the filial organism.
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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

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Distinction between Conservative and Progressive Transmission by Inheritance.—Laws of Conservative Transmission: Transmission of Inherited Characters.—Uninterrupted or Continuous Transmission.—Interrupted or Latent Transmission.—Alternation of Generations.—Relapse.—Degeneracy.—Sexual Transmission.—Secondary Sexual Characters.—Mixed or Amphigonous Transmission.—Hybrids.—Abridged or Simplified Transmission.—Laws of Progressive Inheritance: Transmission of Acquired Characters.—Adapted or Acquired Transmission.—Fixed or Established Transmission.—Homochronous Transmission (Identity in Epoch).—Homotopic Transmission (Identity in Part).—Adaptation and Mutability.—Connection between Adaptation and Nutrition.—Distinction between Indirect and Direct Adaptation.

In the last chapter we considered Transmission by Inheritance, one of the two universal vital activities of organisms, Adaptation and Inheritance, which by their interaction produce the different species of organisms, and we have endeavoured to trace this very mysterious vital activity to a more general physiological function of organisms, namely, to Propagation. This latter in its turn, like other vital phenomena of animals and plants, depends on physical and chemical relations. It is true they appear at times exceedingly complicated, but can nevertheless in reality be traced to simple mechanical causes—that is, to the relations204 of attraction and repulsion in the particles or molecules—in fact, to the motional phenomena of matter.

Now, before we turn our attention to the second function, the phenomenon of Adaptation or Mutability, which counteracts the Transmission by Inheritance, it seems appropriate first to cast one more glance at the various manifestations of Heredity, which we may perhaps even now denominate the “laws of transmission by inheritance.” Unfortunately, up to the present time very little has been done for this most important subject, either in zoology or in botany, and almost all we know of the different laws of inheritance is confined to the experiences of gardeners and farmers. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that on the whole these exceedingly interesting and important phenomena have not been investigated with desirable scientific accuracy, or reduced to the form of scientific laws. Accordingly, what I shall relate of the different laws of transmission are only some preliminary fragments taken out of the infinitely rich store which lies open to our inquiry.

We may first divide all the different phenomena of inheritance into two groups, which we may distinguish as the transmission of inherited characters, and the transmission of acquired characters; and we may call the former the conservative transmission, and the latter the progressive transmission by inheritance. This distinction depends upon the exceedingly important fact that the individuals of every species of animals and plants can transmit to their descendants, not only those qualities which they themselves have inherited from their ancestors, but also the peculiar, individual qualities which they have acquired during their own life. The latter are transmitted by progressive, the205 former by conservative inheritance. We have now first to examine the phenomena of conservative inheritance, that is, the transmission of such qualities as the organism has already received from its parents or ancestors. (Gen. Morph. ii. 180.)

Among the phenomena of conservative inheritance we are first struck by that which is its most general law, and which we may term the law of uninterrupted or continuous transmission. It is so universal among the higher animals and plants, that the uninitiated might overestimate its action and consider it as the only normal law of transmission by inheritance. This law simply consists in the fact that among most species of animals and plants, every generation is, on the whole, like the preceding—that the parents are as like the grandparents as they are like the children. “Like produces like,” as is commonly said, but more accurately “similar things produce similar things.” For, in reality, the descendants of every organism are never absolutely equal in all points, but only similar in a greater or less degree. This law is so generally known, that I need not give any examples of it.

The law of interrupted or latent transmission by inheritance, which might also be termed alternating transmission, is in a measure opposed to the preceding law. This important law appears principally active among many lower animals and plants, and manifests itself in contrast to the former in the fact that the offspring are not like their parents, but very dissimilar, and that only the third or a later generation becomes similar to the first. The grandchildren are like the grandparents, but quite unlike the parents. This is a remarkable phenomenon, and, as is well206 known, occurs also very frequently, though in a less degree, in human families. Every one of my readers doubtless knows some members of a family who, in this or that peculiarity, much more resemble the grandfather or grandmother than the father or mother. Sometimes it lies in bodily peculiarities, for example, features of face, colour of hair, size of body—sometimes in mental qualities, for example, temperament, energy, understanding—which are transmitted in this manner. This fact may be observed in domestic animals as well as in the case of man. Among the domestic animals most liable to vary—as the dog, horse, and ox—breeders very frequently find that the product by breeding resembles the grandparents far more than it does its own parental organism. If we express this general law and the succession of generations by the letters of the alphabet, then A = C = E, whilst B = D = F, and so on.

This very remarkable fact appears in a more striking way in the lower animals and plants than in the higher, and especially in the well-known phenomenon of alternation of generations (metagenesis). Here we very frequently find—for example, among the Planarian worms, sea-squirts or Tunicates, Zoophytes, and also among ferns and mosses—that the organic individual in the first place produces, by propagation, a form completely different from the parental form, and that only the descendants of this generation, again, become like the first. This regular change of generation was discovered by the poet Chamisso, on his voyage round the world in 1819, among the Salpæ, cylindrical tunicates, transparent like glass, which float on the surface of the sea. Here the larger generation, the individuals 207 of which live isolated and possess an eye of the form of a horse-shoe, produce in a non-sexual manner (by the formation of buds) a completely different and smaller generation. The individuals of this second smaller generation live united in chains and possess a cone-shaped eye. Every individual of such a chain produces, in a sexual manner (hermaphrodite) again, a non-sexual solitary form of the first and larger generation. Among the Salpæ, therefore, it is always the first, third, and fifth generation, and in like manner the second, fourth, and sixth generations, that are entirely like one another. However, it is not always only one, but in other cases a number of generations, which are thus leapt over; so that the first generation resembles the fourth and seventh, the second resembles the fifth and eighth, the third resembles the sixth and ninth, and so on. Three different generations alternate with one another; for example, among the neat little sea-buoys (Doliolum), small tunicates closely related to the Salpæ. In this case it is A = D = G, further, B = E = H, and C = F = I. Among the plant-lice (Aphides), each sexual generation is followed by a succession of from eight to ten or twelve non-sexual generations, which are like one another, but differ from the sexual generations. Then, again, a sexual generation reappears like the one long before vanished.

If we further follow this remarkable law of latent or interrupted inheritance, and take into consideration all the phenomena appertaining to it, we may comprise under it also the well-known phenomena of reversion. By the term “reversion” or “atavism” we understand the remarkable fact known to all breeders of animals, that occasionally single and individual animals assume a form which has not208 existed for many generations, but belongs to a generation which has long since disappeared. One of the most remarkable instances of this kind is the fact that in some horses there sometimes appear singular dark stripes, similar to those of the zebra, quagga, and other wild species of African horses. Domestic horses of the most different races and of all colours sometimes show such dark stripes; for example, a stripe along the back, a stripe across the shoulders, and the like. The sudden appearance of these stripes can only be explained by the supposition that it is the effect of a latent transmission, a relapse into the ancient original form, which has long since vanished, and was once common to all species of horses; the original form, undoubtedly, was originally striped like the zebras, quaggas, etc. In like manner, certain qualities in other domestic animals sometimes appear quite suddenly, which once marked their wild ancestors, now long since extinct. In plants, also, such a relapse can be observed very frequently. All my readers probably know the wild yellow toad-flax (Linaria vulgaris), a plant very common in our fields and hedges. Its dragon-mouthed yellow flower contains two long and two short stamens. But sometimes there appears a single blossom (Peloria) which is funnel-shaped, and quite regularly composed of five individual and equal sections, with five corresponding stamens. This Peloria can only be explained as a relapse into the long since extinct and very ancient common form of all those plants which, like the toad-flax, possess dragon-mouthed, two-lipped flowers, with two long and two short stamens. The original form, like the Peloria, possessed a regular five-spurred blossom, with five equal stamens, which only later and by degrees have become209 unequal (compare p. 17). All such relapses are to be brought under the law of interrupted or latent transmission, although the number of intervening generations may be enormous.

When cultivated plants or domestic animals become wild, when they are withdrawn from the conditions of cultivated life, they experience changes which appear not only as adaptations to their new mode of life, but partially also as relapses into the ancient original form out of which the cultivated forms have been developed. Thus the different kinds of cabbage, which are exceedingly different in form, may be led back to the original form, by allowing them to grow wild. In like manner, dogs, horses, heifers, etc., when growing wild, often revert more or less to a long extinct generation. An immensely long succession of generations may pass away before this power of latent transmission becomes extinguished.

A third law of conservative transmission may be called the law of sexual transmission, according to which each sex transmits to the descendants of the same sex peculiarities which are not inherited by the descendants of the other sex. The so-called secondary sexual characters, which in many respects are of extraordinary interest, everywhere furnish numerous examples of this law. Subordinate or secondary sexual characters are those peculiarities of one of the two sexes which are not directly connected with the sexual organs themselves; such characters, which exclusively belong to the male sex, are, for example, the antlers of the stag, the mane of the lion, and the spur of the cock. The human beard, an ornament commonly denied to the female sex, belongs to the same class. Similar characteristics by which210 the female sex is alone distinguished are, for example, the developed breasts, with the lactatory glands of female mammals and the pouch of the female opossum. The bodily size, also, and complexion, differs in female animals of many species from that of the male. All these secondary sexual qualities, like the sexual organs themselves, are transmitted by the male organism only to the male, not to the female, and vice versâ. Contrary facts are rare exceptions to the rule.

A fourth law of transmission, which has here to be mentioned, in a certain sense contradicts the last, and limits it, viz., the law of mixed or mutual (amphigonous) transmission. This law tells us that every organic individual produced in a sexual way receives qualities from both parents, from the father as well as from the mother. This fact, that personal qualities of each of the two sexes are transmitted to both male and female descendants, is very important, Goethe mentions it of himself, in the beautiful lines—

“Von Vater hab ich die Statur, des Lebens ernstes Führen Von Mütterchen die Frohnatur und Lust zu fabuliren.” “From my father I have my stature and the serious tenour of my life, From my mother a joyous nature and a turn for poetizing.”

This phenomenon, I suppose, is so well-known to all, that I need not here enter upon it. It is according to the different portions of their character which father and mother transmit to their children, that the individual differences among brothers and sisters are chiefly determined.

The very important and interesting phenomenon of hybridism also belongs to this law of mixed or amphigonous211 transmission. It alone, when rightly estimated, is quite sufficient to refute the prevailing dogma of the constancy of species. Plants, as well as animals, belonging to quite different species, may sexually mingle with one another and produce descendants which in many cases can again propagate themselves, and that indeed either (more frequently) by mingling with one of the two parental species, or (more rarely) by pure in-breeding, hybrid mixing with hybrid. The latter is well established, for example, in the hybrids of hares and rabbits (Lepus Darwinii, p. 147). The hybrids of a horse and a donkey, two different species of the same genus (Equus), are well known. These hybrids differ according as the father or the mother belongs to the one or the other species—the horse or the donkey. The mule produced by a mare and a he-donkey has qualities quite different from those of the jinny (Hinnus), the hybrid of a horse and she-donkey. In both cases the hybrid produced by the crossing of two different species is a mixed form, which receives qualities from both parents; but the qualities of the hybrid are different, according to the form of the crossing. In like manner, mulattoes produced by a European and a negress show a different mixture of characters from the hybrids produced by a negro with a European female. In these phenomena of hybrid-breeding, as well as in the other laws of transmission previously mentioned, we are as yet unable to show the acting causes in detail; but no naturalist doubts the fact that the causes are in all cases purely mechanical and dependent upon the nature of organic matter itself. If we possessed more delicate means of investigation than our rude organs of sense and auxilliary instruments, we should be able to212 discover those causes, and to trace them to the chemical and physical properties of matter.

Among the phenomena of conservative transmission, we must now mention, as the fifth law, the law of abridged or simplified transmission. This law is very important in regard to embryology or ontogeny, that is in regard to the history of the development of organic individuals. Ontogeny, or the history of the development of individuals, as I have already mentioned in the first chapter (p. 10), and as I subsequently shall explain more minutely, is nothing but a short and quick repetition of Phylogeny dependent on the laws of transmission and adaptation—that is, a repetition of the palæontological history of development of the whole organic tribe, or phylum, to which the organism belongs. If, for example, we follow the individual development of a man, an ape, or any other higher mammal within the maternal body from the egg, we find that the fœtus or embryo arising out of the egg passes through a series of very different forms, which on the whole agrees with, or at least runs parallel to, a series of forms which is presented to us by the historical chain of ancestors of the higher mammals. Among these ancestors we may mention certain fishes, amphibians, marsupials, etc. But the parallelism or agreement of these two series of development is never quite complete; on the contrary, in ontogeny there are always gaps and leaps which indicate the omission of certain stages belonging to the phylogeny. Fritz Müller, in his excellent work, “Für Darwin,”(16) has clearly shown in the case of the Crustacea, or crabs, that “the historical record preserved in the individual history of development is gradually obscured, in proportion as development takes a more and more direct213 route from the egg to the complete animal.” This process of obscuring and shortening is determined by the law of abridged transmission, and I mention it here specially because it is of great importance for the understanding of embryology, and because it explains the fact, at first so strange, that the whole series of forms which our ancestors have passed through in their gradual development are no longer visible in the series of forms of our own individual development from the egg.

Opposed to the laws of the conservative transmission, hitherto discussed, are the phenomena of the transmission of the second series, that is, the laws of progressive transmission by inheritance. As already mentioned, they depend upon the fact that the organism transmits to its descendants not only those qualities which it has inherited from its own ancestors, but also a number of those individual qualities which it has acquired during its own lifetime. Adaptation is here seen to be connected with transmission by inheritance (Gen. Morph. ii. 186).

At the head of these important phenomena of progressive transmission, we may mention the law of adapted or acquired transmission. In reality it asserts nothing more than what I have said above, that in certain circumstances the organism is capable of transmitting to its descendants all the qualities which it has acquired during its own life by adaptation. This phenomenon, of course, shows itself most distinctly when the newly acquired peculiarity produces any considerable change in the inherited form. This is the case in the examples I mentioned in the preceding chapter as to transmission in general, in the case of the men with six fingers and toes, the porcupine men, copper beeches,214 weeping willows, etc. The transmission of acquired diseases, such as consumption, madness, and albinism, likewise form very striking examples. Albinoes are those individuals who are distinguished by the absence of colouring matter, or pigments, in the skin. They are of frequent occurrence among men, animals, and plants. In the case of animals of a definite dark colour, individuals are not unfrequently born which are entirely without colour, and in animals possessing eyes, this absence of pigment extends even to the eyes, so that the iris of the eye, which is commonly of a bright or intense colour, is colourless, but appears red, on account of the blood-vessels being seen through it. Among many animals, such as rabbits and mice, albinoes with white fur and red eyes are so much liked that they are propagated in great numbers as a special race. This would be impossible were it not for the law of the transmission of adaptations.

Which of the changes acquired by an organism are transmitted to its descendants, and which are not, cannot be determined à priori, and we are unfortunately not acquainted with the definite conditions under which the transmission takes place. We only know in a general way that certain acquired qualities are much more easily transmitted than others, for example, more easily than the mutilations caused by accidents. These latter are generally not transmitted by inheritance, otherwise the descendants of men who have lost their arms or legs would be born without the corresponding arm or leg; but here, also, exceptions occur, and a race of dogs without tails has been produced by consistently cutting off the tails of both sexes of the dog during several generations. A few years ago a case occurred on an estate near Jena, in which by a careless slamming of 215 a stable door the tail of a bull was wrenched off, and the calves begotten by this bull were all born without a tail. This is certainly an exception; but it is very important to note the fact, that under certain unknown conditions such violent changes are transmitted in the same manner as many diseases.

In very many cases the change which is transmitted and preserved by adapted transmission is constitutional or inborn, as in the case of albinism mentioned before. The change then depends upon that form of adaptation which we call the indirect or potential. A very striking instance is furnished by the hornless cattle of Paraguay, in South America. A special race of oxen is there bred which is entirely without horns. It is descended from a single bull, which was born in 1770 of an ordinary pair of parents, and the absence of horns was the result of some unknown cause. All the descendants of this bull produced with a horned cow were entirely without horns. This quality was found advantageous, and by propagating the hornless cattle among one another, a hornless race was obtained, which at present has almost entirely supplanted the horned cattle in Paraguay. The case of the otter-sheep of North America forms a similar example. In the year 1791 a farmer, by name Seth Wright, lived in Massachusetts, in North America; in his normally formed flock of sheep a lamb was suddenly born with a surprisingly long body and very short and crooked legs. It was therefore unable to take any great leaps, and especially unable to leap across a hedge into a neighbour’s garden—a quality which seemed advantageous to the owner, as the territories were divided by hedges. It therefore occurred to him to transmit this quality to other sheep, and by crossing216 this ram with normally shaped ewes, he produced a whole race of sheep, all of which had the qualities of the father, short and crooked legs and a long body. None of them could leap across the hedges, and they therefore were much liked and propagated in Massachusetts.

A second law, which likewise belongs to the series of progressive transmissions, may be called the law of established or habitual transmission. It manifests itself in this, that qualities acquired by an organism during its individual life are the more certainly transmitted to its descendants the longer the causes of that change have been in action, and that this change becomes the more certainly the property of all subsequent generations the longer the cause of change acts upon these latter also. The quality newly acquired by adaptation or mutation must be established or constituted to a certain degree before we can calculate with any probability that it will be transmitted at all to the descendants. In this respect transmission resembles adaptation. The longer a newly acquired quality has been transmitted by inheritance, the more certainly will it be preserved in future generations. If, therefore, for example, a gardener by methodical treatment has produced a new kind of apple, he may calculate with the greater certainty upon preserving the desired peculiarity of this sort the longer he has transmitted the same by inheritance. The same is clearly shown in the transmission of diseases. The longer consumption or madness has been hereditary in a family the deeper is the root of the evil, and the more probable it is that all succeeding generations will suffer from it.

We may conclude the consideration of the phenomena of217 inheritance with the two very important laws of homotopic and contemporaneous transmission by inheritance. We understand by them the fact that changes acquired by an organism during its life, and transmitted to its descendants, appear in the same part of the body in which the parental organism was first affected by them, and that they also appear in the offspring at the same age as that at which they did so in the parent.

The law of contemporaneous or homochronous transmission, which Darwin calls the law of of “transmission in corresponding periods of life,” can be shown very clearly in the transmission of diseases, especially of such as are recognized as very destructive, on account of their hereditary character. They generally appear in the organism of the child at the time corresponding with that in which the parental organism contracted the disease. Hereditary diseases of the lungs, liver, teeth, brain, skin, etc., usually appear in the descendants at the same period, or a little earlier than they showed themselves in the parental organism, or were contracted by it. The calf gets its horns at the same period of life as its parents did. In like manner the young stag receives its antlers at the same period of life in which they appeared in its father or grandfather. In every one of the different sorts of vine the grapes ripen at the same time as they did in the case of their progenitors. It is well known that the time of ripening varies greatly in the different sorts; but as all are descended from a single species, this variation has been acquired by the progenitors of the several sorts, and has then been transmitted by inheritance.

The law of homotopic transmission, which is most218 closely connected with the last mentioned law, and which might be called the law of transmission in corresponding parts of the body, may also be very distinctly recognized in pathological cases of inheritance. Large moles, for example, or accumulations of pigment in several parts of the skin, tumours also, often appear during many generations, not only at the same period of life, but also in the same part of the skin. Excessive development of fat in certain parts of the body is likewise transmitted by inheritance. Above all, it is to be noted that numerous examples of this, as well as of the preceding law, may be found everywhere in the study of embryology. Both the law of homochronous and homotopic transmission are fundamental laws of embryology, or ontogeny. For these laws explain the remarkable fact that the different successive forms of individual development in all generations of one and the same species always appear in the same order of succession, and that the variations of the body always take place in the same parts. This apparently simple and self-evident phenomenon is nevertheless exceedingly wonderful and curious; we cannot explain its real causes, but may confidently assert that they are due to the direct transmission of the organic matter from the parental organism to that of the offspring, as we have seen above in the case of the process of transmission in general, by a consideration of the details of the various modes of reproduction.

Having thus, then, considered the most important laws of Inheritance, we now turn to the second series of phenomena bearing on natural selection, viz., to those of Adaptation or Variation. These phenomena, taken as a whole, stand in a certain opposition to the phenomena of Inheritance, and the difficulty which arises in examining them consists mainly219 in the two sets of phenomena being so completely intercrossed and interwoven. We are but seldom able to say with certainty—of the variations of form which occur before our eyes—how much is owing to Inheritance, and how much to Adaptation. All characters of form, by which organisms are distinguished, are caused either by Inheritance or by Adaptation; but as both functions are continually interacting with each other, it is extremely difficult for the systematic inquirer to recognize the share belonging to each of the two functions in the special structure of individual forms. This is, at present, all the more difficult, because we are as yet scarcely aware of the immense importance of this fact, and because most naturalists have neglected the theory of Adaptation, as well as that of Inheritance. The laws of Inheritance, which we have just discussed, as well as the laws of Adaptation, which we shall consider directly, in reality form only a small portion of the phenomena existing in this domain, but which have not as yet been investigated; and since every one of these laws can interact with every other, it is clear that there is an infinite complication of physiological actions, which are at work in the construction of organisms.

But now, as to the phenomenon of variation or adaptation in general, we must, as in the case of inheritance, view it as a quite universal, physiological fundamental quality of all organisms, without exception—as a manifestation of life which cannot be separated from the idea of organism. Strictly speaking, we must here also, as in the case of inheritance, distinguish between Adaptation itself and Adaptability. By Adaptation (Adaptio), or Variation (Variatio), we understand the fact that the organism, in consequence of220 influences of the surrounding outer world, assumes certain new peculiarities in its vital activity, composition, and form which it has not inherited from its parents; these acquired individual qualities are opposed to those which have been inherited, or, in other words, those which have been transmitted to it from its parents or ancestors. On the other hand, we call Adaptability (Adaptabilitas), or Variability (Variabilitas), the capability inherent in all organisms to acquire such new qualities under the influence of the outer world. (Gen. Morph. ii. 191.)

The undeniable fact of organic adaptation or variation is universally known, and can be observed at every moment in thousands of phenomena surrounding us. But just because the phenomena of variation by external influences appear so self-evident, they have hitherto undergone scarcely any accurate scientific investigation. To them belong all the phenomena which we look upon as the results of contracting and giving up habits, of practice and giving up practices, or as the results of training, of education, of acclimatization, of gymnastics, etc. Many permanent variations brought about by causes producing disease, that is to say, many diseases, are nothing but dangerous adaptations of the organism to injurious conditions of life. In the case of cultivated plants and domestic animals, variation is so striking and powerful that the breeder of animals and the gardener found their whole mode of proceeding upon it, or rather upon the interaction between these phenomena and those of Inheritance. It is also well known to every one that animals and plants, in their wild state, are subject to variation. Every systematic treatise on a group of animals or plants, if it were to be quite complete and exhaustive, ought to mention in every221 individual species the number of variations which differ more or less from the prevailing or typical form of the species. Indeed, in every careful systematic special treatise one finds, in the case of most species, mention of a number of such variations, which are described sometimes as individual deviations, and sometimes as so-called races, varieties, degenerate species, or subordinate species, and which often differ exceedingly from the original species, solely in consequence of the adaptation of the organism to the external conditions of life.

If we now endeavour to fathom the general causes of these phenomena of Adaptation, we arrive at the conclusion that in reality they are as simple as the causes of the phenomena of Inheritance. We have shown that the nature of the process of propagation furnishes the real explanation of the facts of Transmission by Inheritance, that is, the transmission of parental matter to the body of the offspring; and in like manner we can show that the physiological function of nutrition, or change of substance, affords a general explanation of Adaptation or Variation. When I here point to “nutrition” as the fundamental cause of variation and adaptation, I take this word in its widest sense, and I understand by it the whole of the material changes which the organism undergoes in all its parts through the influences of the surrounding outer world. Nutrition thus comprises not only the reception of actual nutritive substances and the influence of different kinds of food, but also, for example, the action upon the organism of water and of the atmosphere, the influence of sunlight, of temperature, and of all those meteorological phenomena which are implied in the term “climate.” The indirect and222 direct influence of the nature of the soil and of the dwelling-place also belong to it; and further, the extremely important and varied influence which is exercised upon every animal and every plant by the surrounding organisms, friends and neighbours, enemies and robbers, parasites, etc. All these and many other very important influences, all of which more or less modify the organism in its material composition, must be taken into consideration in studying the change of substance which goes on in living things. Adaptation, accordingly, is the consequence of all those material variations which are produced in the change of substance of the organism by the external conditions of existence, or by the influences of the surrounding external world.

How very much every organism is dependent upon the whole of its external surroundings, and changed by their alteration, is, in a general way, well known to every one. Only think how much the human power of action is dependent upon the temperature of the air, or how much the disposition of our minds depends upon the colour of the sky. Accordingly as the sky is cloudless and sunny, or covered with large heavy clouds, our state of mind is cheerful or dull. How differently do we feel and think in a forest during a stormy winter night and during a bright summer day! All the different moods of our soul depend upon purely material changes of our brain, upon movements of molecular plasma, which are started through the medium of the senses by the different influences of light, warmth, moisture, etc. “We are a plaything to every pressure of the air.” No less important and deeply influential are the effects produced upon our mind and body by the different quality and223 quantity of food. Our mental activity, the activity of our understanding and of our imagination, is quite different accordingly as we have taken tea or coffee, wine or beer, before or during our work. Our moods, wishes, and feelings are quite different when we are hungry and when we are satisfied. The national character of Englishmen and Gauchos, in South America, who live principally on meat and food rich in nitrogen, is wholly different from that of the Irish, feeding on potatoes, and that of the Chinese, living on rice, both of whom take food deficient in nitrogen. The latter also form much more fat than the former. Here, as everywhere, the variations of the mind go hand in hand with the corresponding transformations of the body; both are produced by purely material causes. But all other organisms, in the same way as man, are varied and changed by the different influences of nutrition. It is well known that we can change in an arbitrary way the form, size, colour, etc., of our cultivated plants and domestic animals, by change of food; that, for example, we can take from or give to a plant definite qualities, accordingly as we expose it to a greater or less degree of sunlight and moisture. As these phenomena are generally widely known, and as we shall proceed presently to the consideration of the different laws of adaptation, we will not dwell here any longer on the general facts of variation.

As the different laws of transmission may be naturally divided into the two series of conservative and progressive transmission, so we may also distinguish between two series of the laws of adaptation, first, the series of laws of indirect, and secondly, the series of laws of direct adaptation. The latter may also be called the laws of actual, and the former the laws of potential, adaptation.

224The first series, comprising the phenomena of indirect (potential) adaptation, has, on the whole, hitherto been little attended to, and Darwin has the merit of having directed special attention to this series of changes. It is somewhat difficult to place this subject clearly before the reader; I will endeavour to make it clear hereafter by examples. Speaking quite generally, indirect or potential adaptation consists in the fact that certain changes in the organism, effected by the influence of nutrition (in its widest sense) and of the external conditions of existence in general, show themselves not in the individual form of the respective organism, but in that of its descendants. Thus, especially in organisms propagating themselves in a sexual way, the reproductive system, or sexual apparatus, is often influenced by external causes (which little affect the rest of the organism), to such a degree that its descendants show a complete alteration of form. This can be seen very strikingly in artificially produced monstrosities. Monstrosities can be produced by subjecting the parental organism to certain extraordinary conditions of life, and, curiously enough, such an extraordinary condition of life does not produce a change of the organism itself, but a change in its descendants. This cannot be called transmission by inheritance, because it is not a quality existing in the parental organism that is transmitted by inheritance. It is, on the contrary, a change affecting the parental organism, but not perceptible in it, that appears in the peculiar formation of its descendants. It is only the impulse to this new formation which is transmitted in propagation through the egg of the mother or the sperm of the father. The new formation exists in the parental organism only as a possibility (potential); in the descendants it becomes a reality (actual).

225As this very important and very general phenomenon had hitherto been entirely neglected, people were inclined to consider all the visible variations and transformations of organic forms as phenomena of adaptation of the second series, that is, as phenomena of direct or actual adaptation. The essence of this latter kind of adaptation consists in the fact that the change affecting the organism (through nutrition, etc.) shows itself immediately by some transformation, and does not only make itself apparent in the descendants. To this class belong all the well-known phenomena in which we can directly trace the transforming influence of climate, food, education, training, etc., in their effects upon the individual itself.

We have seen how the two series of phenomena of progressive and conservative transmission, in spite of their difference in principle, in many ways interfere with and modify each other, and in many ways co-operate with and cross each other. The same is the case, in a still higher degree, in the two series of phenomena of indirect and direct adaptation, which are opposed to each other and yet closely connected. Some naturalists, especially Darwin and Carl Vogt, ascribe to the indirect or potential adaptation by far the more important and almost exclusive influence. But the majority of naturalists have hitherto been inclined to take the opposite view, and to attribute the principal influence to direct or actual adaptation. I consider this controversy, in the mean while, as almost useless. It is but seldom that we are in a condition, in any individual case of variation, to judge how much of it belongs to direct and how much to indirect adaptation. We are, on the whole, still too little acquainted with these exceedingly important226 and intricate relations, and can only assert, in a general way, that the transformation of organic forms is to be ascribed either to direct adaptation alone, or to indirect adaptation alone, or lastly, to the co-operation of both direct and indirect adaptation.
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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

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Laws of Indirect or Potential Adaptation.—Individual Adaptation.—Monstrous or Sudden Adaptation.—Sexual Adaptation.—Laws of Direct or Actual Adaptation.—Universal Adaptation.—Cumulative Adaptation.—Cumulative Influence of External Conditions of Existence and Cumulative Counter-Influence of the Organism.—Free Will.—Use and Non-use of Organs.—Practice and Habit.—Correlative Adaptation.—Correlation of Development.—Correlation of Organs.—Explanation of Indirect or Potential Adaptation by the Correlation of the Sexual Organs and of the other parts of the Body.—Divergent Adaptation.—Unlimited or Infinite Adaptation.

In the last chapter we reduced into two groups the phenomena of Adaptation or Variation, which, in connection and interaction with the phenomena of Heredity, produce all the endless variety of forms in animals and plants—first, the group of indirect or potential, and secondly, the group of direct or actual Adaptation. We shall occupy ourselves with a closer examination of the different laws which we can discover in these two groups of the phenomena of variation. Let us first take into consideration the remarkable and very important, although hitherto much neglected, phenomena of indirect variation.

Indirect or potential adaptation manifests itself, it will be remembered, in the striking and exceedingly important fact228 that organic individuals experience transformations and assume forms in consequence of changes of nutrition which have not operated on them themselves, but upon their parental organism. The transforming influence of the external conditions of existence, of climate, of nutrition, etc., shows its effects here not directly in the transformation of the organism itself, but indirectly in that of its descendants. (Gen. Morph. ii. 202.)

As the principal and most universal of the laws of indirect variation must be mentioned the law of individual adaptation, or the important proposition that all organic individuals from the commencement of their individual existence are unequal, although often very much alike. As a proof of this proposition, I may at once point to the fact, that in the human race in general all brothers and sisters, all children of the same parents, are unequal from their birth. No one will venture to assert that two children at their birth are perfectly alike; that the size of the individual parts of their bodies, the number of hairs on their heads, the number of cells composing their outer skins or epidermis, the number of blood-cells are the same in both children, or that both children have come into the world with the same abilities or talents. But what more specially proves this law of individual difference, is the fact that in the case of those animals which produce several young ones at a time,—for instance, dogs and cats,—all the young of each birth differ from one another more or less strikingly in size and colour of the individual parts of the body, or in strength, etc. Now this law is universal. All organic individuals from their beginning are distinguished by certain, though often extremely minute, differences, and the229 cause of these individual differences, though in detail usually utterly unknown to us, depends partly or entirely on certain influences which the organs of propagation in the parental organism have undergone.

A second law of indirect adaptation, which we shall call the law of monstrous or sudden adaptation, is of less importance and less general than the law of individual adaptation. Here the divergences of the child-organism from the parental form are so striking that, as a rule, we may designate them as monstrosities. In many cases they are produced, as has been proved by experiments, by the parental organism having been subject to a certain treatment, and placed under peculiar conditions of nutrition; for example, when air and light are withdrawn from it, or when other influences powerfully acting upon its nutrition are changed in a certain way. The new condition of existence causes a strong and striking modification of form, not directly of the organism itself, but only of that of its descendants. The mode of this influence in detail we cannot discover, and we can only in a very general way detect a causal connection between the abnormal formation of the child and a certain change in the conditions of existence of its parents exerting a special influence upon the organs of propagation in the latter. The previously mentioned phenomenon of albinism probably belongs to this group of abnormal or sudden variations, also the individual cases of human beings with six fingers and toes, the case of the hornless cattle, as well as those of sheep and goats with four or six horns. The abnormal deviation in all these cases probably owes its origin to a cause which at first only affected the reproductive system of the230 parental organism, the egg of the mother or the sperm of the father.

A third curious manifestation of indirect adaptation may be termed the law of sexual adaptation. Under this name we indicate the remarkable fact that certain influences, which act upon the male organs of propagation only, affect the structure of the male descendants, and in like manner other influences, which act upon the female organs of propagation only, manifest their effect only in the change of structure of the female descendants. This remarkable phenomenon is still very obscure, and has not as yet been investigated, but is probably of great importance in regard to the origin of “secondary sexual characteristics,” to which we have already made allusion.

All the phenomena of sexual, monstrous, and individual adaptation, which we may comprise under the name of the laws of indirect or potential adaptation, are as yet very little known to us in their real nature and in their deeper causal connection. Only this much we can at present maintain with certainty, that numerous and important transformations in organic forms owe their existence to this process. Many and striking variations of form solely depend on causes which at first only affect the nutrition of the parental organism, and specially its organs of propagation. Evidently the relations in which the sexual organs stand to other parts of the body are of the greatest importance. We shall have more to say of these presently, when we speak of the law of correlative adaptation. How powerfully the variations in the conditions of life and nutrition affect the propagation of organisms is rendered obvious by the remarkable fact that numerous wild animals which we keep231 in our zoological gardens, and exotic plants which are grown in our botanical gardens, are no longer able to reproduce themselves. This is the case, for example, with most birds of prey, parrots, and monkeys. The elephant, also, and the animals of prey of the bear genus, in captivity hardly ever produce young ones. In like manner many plants in a cultivated state become sterile. The two sexes may indeed unite, but no fructification, or no development of the fructified germ, takes place. From this it follows with certainty that the changed mode of nutrition in the cultivated state is able completely to destroy the capability of reproduction, and therefore to exercise the greatest influence upon the sexual organs. In like manner other adaptations or variations of nutrition in the parental organism may cause, not indeed a complete want of descendants, but still important changes in their form.

Much better known than the phenomena of indirect or potential adaptation are those of direct or actual adaptation, to the consideration of which we now turn our attention. To them belong all those changes of organisms which are generally considered to be the results of practice, habit, training, education, etc.; also those changes of organic forms which are effected directly by the influence of nutrition, of climate, and other external conditions of existence. As has already been remarked in direct or actual adaptation, the transforming influence of the external cause affects the form of the organism itself, and does not only manifest itself in that of the descendants. (Gen. Morph. ii. 207.)

We may place the law of universal adaptation at the head of the different laws of direct or actual adaptation,232 because it is the chief and most comprehensive among them. It may be briefly explained in the following proposition: “All organic individuals become unequal to one another in the course of their life by adaptation to different conditions of life, although the individuals of one and the same species remain mostly very much alike.” A certain inequality of organic individuals, as we have seen, was already to be assumed in virtue of the law of individual (indirect) adaptation. But, beyond this, the original inequality of individuals is afterwards increased by the fact that every individual, during its own independent life, subjects and adapts itself to its own peculiar conditions of existence. All different individuals of every species, however like they may be in their first stages of life, become in the further course of their existence less like to one another. They deviate from one another in more or less important peculiarities, and this is a natural consequence of the different conditions under which the individuals live. There are no two single individuals of any species which can complete their life under exactly the same external circumstances. The vital conditions of nutrition, of moisture, air, light; further, the vital conditions of society, the inter-relations with surrounding individuals of the same or other species, are different in every individual being; and this difference first affects the functions, and later changes the form of every individual organism. If the children of a human family show, even at the beginning, certain individual inequalities which we may consider as the consequence of individual (indirect) adaptation, they will appear still more different at a later period of life, when each child has passed through different experiences, and has233 adapted itself to different conditions of life. The original difference of the individual processes of development, evidently becomes greater the longer the life lasts and the more various the external conditions which influence the separate individuals. This may be demonstrated in the simplest manner in man, as well as in domestic animals and cultivated plants, in which the vital conditions may be arbitrarily modified. Two brothers, of whom one is brought up as a workman and the other as a priest, develop quite differently in body as well as in mind; in like manner, two dogs of one and the same birth, of which one is trained as a sporting dog and the other chained up as a watch dog. The same observation may also readily be made as to organic individuals in a natural state. If, for instance, one carefully compares all the trees in a fir or beech forest, which consists of trees of a single species, one finds that among all the hundreds or thousands of trees, there are not two individual trees completely agreeing in size of trunk and other parts, in the number of branches, leaves, etc. Everywhere we find individual inequalities which, in part at least, are merely the consequences of the different conditions of life under which the trees have developed. It is true we can never say with certainty how much of this dissimilarity in all the individuals of every species may have originally been caused by indirect individual adaptation, and how much of it acquired under the influence of direct or universal adaptation.

A second series of phenomena of direct adaptation, which we may comprise under the law of cumulative adaptation, is no less important and general than universal adaptation. Under this name I include a great number of very important234 phenomena, which are usually divided into two quite distinct groups. Naturalists, as a rule, have distinguished, first, those variations of organisms which are produced directly by the permanent influence of external conditions (by the constant action of nutrition, of climate, of surroundings, etc.), and secondly, those variations which arise from habit and practice, from accustoming themselves to definite conditions of life, and from the use and non-use of organs. The latter influences have been set forth especially by Lamarck as important causes of the change of organic forms, while the former have for a very long time been recognized as such more generally.

The sharp distinction usually made between these two groups of cumulative adaptation, and which even Darwin still maintains, disappears as soon as we reflect more accurately and deeply upon the real nature and causal foundation of these two, apparently very different, series of adaptations. We then arrive at the conviction that in both cases there are always two different active causes to be dealt with: on the one hand the external influence or action of adaptative conditions of life, and on the other hand the internal reaction of the organism which subjects and adapts itself to that condition of life. If cumulative adaptation is considered from the first point of view alone, and the transforming actions of the permanent external conditions of life are traced to those conditions solely, then the principal stress is laid unduly upon the external factor, and the necessary internal reaction of the organism is not taken into proper consideration. If, on the other hand, cumulative adaptation is unjustly regarded solely in relation to its second factor, and the transforming action of the organism235 itself, its reaction against the external influences, its change by practice, habit, use, or non-use of organs, is put into the foreground, then we forget that this reaction is first called into play by the action of external conditions of existence. Hence it seems that the distinction made between these two groups lies only in the different manner of viewing them, and I believe that they can, with full justice, be considered as one. The most essential fact in these phenomena of cumulative adaptation is that the change of the organism which manifests itself first in the functions, and at a later period in the form, is the result either of long enduring, or of often repeated, influences of an external cause. The smallest cause, by cumulation of its action, can attain the greatest results.

There are innumerable examples of this kind of direct adaptation. In whatever direction we may examine the life of animals and plants, we discover on all hands evident and undeniable changes of this kind. Let me first mention some of those phenomena of adaptation occasioned directly by nutrition itself. Every one knows that the domestic animals which are bred for certain purposes can be variously modified, according to the different quantity and quality of the food given to them. If a farmer in breeding sheep wishes to produce fine wool, he gives them different food from what he would give if he wished to obtain good flesh or an abundance of fat. Choice race and carriage horses receive better food than dray and cart horses. Even the bodily form of man—for example, the amount of fat—is quite different according to his nutrition. Food containing much nitrogen produces little fat, that containing little nitrogen produces a great deal of fat.236 People who, by means of Banting’s system, at present so popular, wish to become thin eat only meat and eggs—no bread, no potatoes. The important variations that can be produced among cultivated plants, solely by changing the quantity and quality of nourishment, are well known. The same plant acquires an altogether different appearance, according as it is placed in a dry and warm place, exposed to the sunlight or placed in a cool damp spot in the shade. Many plants, if transferred to the sea shore, get in a short space of time thick, fleshy leaves, and the same plants placed in a particularly dry and hot locality get thin hairy leaves. All these variations arise directly from the cumulative influence of changed nutrition.

But it is not only the quantity and quality of the articles of nutrition which affect and powerfully change and transform the organism, but it is affected also by all the other external conditions of existence, above all by its nearest organic surroundings, the society of friendly or hostile organisms. One and the same kind of tree develops itself quite differently in an open locality, where it is free on all sides, and in a forest where it must adapt itself to its surroundings, where it is pressed on all sides by its nearest neighbours, and is forced to shoot upwards. In the former case, the branches of the tree spread widely out; in the latter, the trunk extends upwards, and the top of the tree remains small and contracted. How powerfully all these circumstances, and how powerfully the hostile or friendly influence of surrounding organisms, of parasites, etc., affect every animal and every plant, is so well known, that it appears superfluous to quote further examples. The change of form, or transformation which is thereby effected,237 is never solely the direct result of the external influence, but must always be traced to the corresponding reaction, and to the activity of the organism itself, which consists in contracting a habit, or practice, and in the use or non-use of organs. The fact that these latter phenomena, as a rule, have been considered distinct from the former, is owing first to the one-sided manner of viewing them already mentioned, and secondly to the wrong notion which has been formed as to the nature and the influence of the activity of the will in animals.

The activity of the will, which is the organ of habit, of practice, of the use or non-use of organs among animals, is, like every other activity of the animal soul, dependent upon material processes in the central nervous system, upon peculiar motions which emanate from the albuminous matter of the ganglion cells, and the nervous fibres connected with them. The will, as well as the other mental activities, in higher animals, in this respect is different from that of men only in quantity, not in quality. The will of the animal, as well as that of man, is never free. The widely spread dogma of the freedom of the will is, from a scientific point of view, altogether untenable. Every physiologist who scientifically investigates the activity of the will in man and animals, must of necessity arrive at the conviction that in reality the will is never free, but is always determined by external or internal influences. These influences are for the most part ideas which have been either formed by Adaptation or by Inheritance, and are traceable to one or other of these two physiological functions. As soon as we strictly examine the action of our own will, without the traditional prejudice about its freedom, we238 perceive that every apparently free action of the will is the result of previous ideas, which are based on notions inherited or otherwise acquired, and are therefore, in the end, dependent on the laws of Adaptation and Inheritance. The same also applies to the action of the will in all animals. As soon as their will is considered in connection with their mode of life, in its relation to the changes which the mode of life is subject to from external conditions, we are at once convinced that no other view is possible. Hence the changes of the will which follow the changes of nutrition, and which, in the form of practice, habit, etc., produce variations in structure, must be reckoned among the other material processes of cumulative adaptation.

Whilst an animal’s will is adapting itself to changed conditions of existence by the acquisition of new habits, practices, etc., it not unfrequently effects the most remarkable transformations of the organic form. Numerous instances of this may be found everywhere in animal life. Thus, for example, many organs in domestic animals are suppressed, when in consequence of a changed mode of life they cease to act. Ducks and fowls in a wild state fly exceedingly well, but lose this facility more or less in a cultivated state. They accustom themselves to use their legs more than their wings, and in consequence the muscles and skeleton used in flying are essentially changed in their development and form. Darwin has proved this by a very careful comparative measurement and weighing of the respective parts of the skeleton in the different races of domestic ducks, which are all descended from the wild duck (Anas boschas). The bones of the wings in tame ducks are weaker, the bones of the legs, on the other hand, are more239 strongly developed than in wild ducks. In ostriches and other running birds which have become completely unaccustomed to fly, the consequence is that their wings are entirely crippled and degenerate into mere “rudimentary organs” (p. 12). In many domestic animals, especially in many races of dogs and rabbits, we find that in the cultivated state they have acquired pendulous ears. This is simply a consequence of a diminished use of the auricular muscles. In a wild state these animals have to exert their ears very much in order to discover an approaching foe, and this is accompanied by a strong development of the muscular apparatus, which keeps the outer ears in an upright position, and by which they can turn them in all directions. In a domestic state the same animals no longer require to listen so attentively, they prick up or turn their ears only a little; the auricular muscles cease to be used, gradually become weakened, and the ears hang down flabbily, or become rudimentary.

As in these cases the function, and consequently the form also, of the organ becomes degenerated through disuse, so, on the other hand, it becomes more developed by greater use. This is particularly striking if we compare the brain, and the mental activity belonging to it, in wild animals and those domestic animals which are descended from them. The dog and horse, which are so vastly improved by cultivation, show an extraordinary degree of mental development, in comparison with their wild original ancestors, and evidently the change in the bulk of the brain, which is connected with it, is mainly determined by persistent exercise. It is also well known how quickly and powerfully muscles grow and change their form by continual 240 practice. Compare, for example, the arms and legs of a trained gymnast with those of an immovable book-worm.

How powerfully external influences affect the habits of animals and their mode of life, and in this way still further change their forms, is very strikingly shown in many cases among amphibious animals and reptiles. Our commonest indigenous snake, the ringed snake, lays eggs which require three weeks’ time to develop. But when it is kept in captivity, and no sand is strewn in the cage, it does not lay its eggs, but retains them until the young ones are developed. The difference between animals producing living offspring and those laying eggs is here effaced simply by the change of the ground upon which the animal lives.

The water-salamanders, or tritons, which have been artificially made to retain their original gills, are extremely interesting in this respect. The tritons are amphibious animals, nearly akin to frogs, and possess, like the latter, in their youth external organs of respiration—gills—with which they, while living in water, breathe the air dissolved in the water. At a later date a metamorphosis takes place in tritons, as in frogs. They leave the water, lose their gills, and accustom themselves to breathe with their lungs. But if they are prevented from doing this by being kept shut up in a tank, they do not lose their gills. The gills remain, and the water salamander continues through life in that low stage of development, beyond which its lower relations, the gilled salamanders, or Sozobranchiata, never pass. The gilled salamander attains its full size, its sexual development, and reproduces itself without losing its gills.

Great interest was caused a short time ago, among241 zoologists, by the axolotel (Siredon pisciformis), a gilled salamander from Mexico, nearly related to the triton; it had already been known for a long time, and been bred on a large scale in the zoological garden in Paris. This animal possesses external gills, like the young salamander, but retains them all its life, like all other Sozobranchiata. This gilled salamander generally remains in the water, with its aquatic organs of respiration, and also propagates itself there. But in the Paris garden, unexpectedly from among hundreds of these animals, a small number crept out of the water on to the dry land, lost their gills, and changed themselves into gill-less salamanders, which are not to be distinguished from a North-American genus of tritons (Amblystoma), and breathe only through lungs. In this exceedingly curious case we can directly follow the great stride from water-breathing to air-breathing animals, a stride which can indeed be observed every spring in the individual history of development of frogs and salamanders. Just as every separate frog and every separate salamander transforms itself from an amphibious animal breathing through gills, at a later period into one breathing through lungs, so the whole group of frogs and salamanders have arisen from animals breathing through gills, and akin to the Siredon. The Sozobranchiata have remained up to the present day in that low stage of development. Ontogeny here explains phylogeny; the history of the development of individuals explains that of the whole group (p. 10).

To the law of accumulative adaptation there closely follows a third law of direct or actual adaptation, the law of correlative adaptation. According to this important law, actual adaptation not only changes those parts of the242 organism which are directly affected by its influence, but other parts also not directly affected by it. This is the consequence of organic solidarity, and especially of the unity of the nutrition existing among all the parts of every organism. If, for example, the hairiness of the leaves increases in a plant by its being transferred to a dry locality, then this change reacts upon the nutrition of other parts, and it may result in a shortening of the parts of the stalk, and produce a more contracted form of the whole plant. In some races of pigs and dogs—for example, in the Turkish dog—which by adaptation to a warmer climate have more or less lost their hair, the teeth also have degenerated. Whales and Endentata (armadillos), which by their curious skin-covering are removed from the other mammals, also show the greatest deviations in the formation of their teeth. Further, those races of domestic animals (oxen and pigs) which have acquired short legs have, as a rule, also a short and compact head. Among other examples, the races of pigeons which have the longest legs are also characterized by the longest beaks. The same correlation between the length of the legs and beaks is universal in the order of stilted-birds (Grallatores), in storks, cranes, snipe, etc. The correlations which thus exist between different parts of the organism are most remarkable, but their real cause is unknown to us. In general, we can of course say, the changes of nutrition affecting an individual part must necessarily react on the other parts, because the nutrition of every organism is a connected, centralized activity. But why just this or that part should exhibit this or that particular correlation is in most cases quite unknown to us. We know a great number of such correlations in nutrition; they are especially seen in243 those changes of animals and plants which give rise to an absence of pigment (noticed previously)—in albinoes. The want of the usual colouring matter goes hand in hand with certain changes in the formation of other parts; for example, of the muscular and osseous system, consequently of organic systems which are not at all ultimately connected with the system of the outer skin. Very frequently albinoes are more feebly developed, and consequently the whole structure of the body is more delicate and weak than in coloured animals of the same species. The organs of the senses and nervous system are in like manner curiously affected when there is this want of pigment. White cats with blue eyes are nearly always deaf. White horses are distinguished from coloured horses by their special liability to form sarkomatous tumours. In man, also, the degree of the development of pigment in the outer skin greatly influences the susceptibility of the organism for certain diseases; so that, for instance, Europeans with a dark complexion, black hair, and brown eyes become more easily acclimatized to tropical countries, and are less subject to the diseases there prevalent (inflammation of the liver, yellow fever, etc.) than Europeans of white complexion, fair hair, and blue eyes. (Compare above, p. 150.)

Among these correlations in the formation of different organs, those are specially remarkable which exist between the sexual organs and other parts of the body. No change of any part reacts so powerfully upon the other parts of the body as a certain treatment of the sexual organs. Farmers who wish to obtain an abundant formation of fat in pigs, sheep, etc., remove the sexual organs by cutting them out (castration), and this is indeed done to animals of both sexes. 244 The result is an excessive development of fat. The same is done to the singers in certain religious corporations. These unfortunates are castrated in early youth, in order that they may retain their high boyish voices. In consequence of this mutilation of the genitals, the larynx remains in its youthful stage of development. The muscular tissues of the body remain at the same time weakly developed, while below the skin an abundance of fat accumulates. But this mutilation also powerfully reacts upon the development of the nervous system, the energy of the will, etc., and it is well known that human castrates, or eunuchs, as well as castrated animals, are utterly deficient in the special psychical character which distinguishes the male sex. Man is a man, both in body and soul, solely through his male generative glands.

These most important and influential correlations between the sexual organs and the other parts of the body, especially the brain, are found equally in both sexes. This might be expected even à priori, because in most animals the two kinds of organs develop themselves from the same foundation, and at the beginning are not different. In man, as in the rest of the vertebrate animals, the male and female organs in the original state of the germ are entirely the same, and the differences of the two sexes only gradually arise in the course of embryonic development (in man, in the ninth week of embryonic life), by one and the same gland developing in the female as the ovary, and in the male as the testicle. Every change of the female ovary, therefore, has a no less important reaction upon the whole female organism than every change of the testicle has upon the male organism. Virchow has expressed the importance of this correlation in his admirable essay on “Das Weib und die245 Zelle” (“Woman and the Cell”), in the following words:—“Woman is woman only by her sexual glands; all the peculiarities of her body and mind, of her nutrition and her nervous activity, the sweet delicacy and roundness of her limbs, the peculiar formation of the pelvis, the development of the breasts, the continuance of the high voice, that beautiful ornament of hair on her head, with the scarcely perceptible soft down on the rest of the skin—then again, the depth of feeling, the truth of her direct perceptions, her gentleness, devotion, and fidelity—in short, all the feminine qualities which we admire and honour in a true woman are but a dependence of the ovary. Take this ovary away, and the man-woman stands before us—a loathly abortion.”

The same close correlation between the sexual organs and the other parts of the body occurs among plants as generally as among animals. If one wishes to obtain an abundance of fruit from a garden plant, the growth of the leaves is curtailed by cutting off some of them. If, on the other hand, an ornamental plant with a luxuriance of large and beautiful leaves is desired, then the development of the blossoms and fruit is prevented by cutting off the flower buds. In both cases one system of organs develops at the cost of the others. Thus, also, most variations in the formation of leaves in wild plants result in corresponding transformations of the generative parts or blossoms. The great importance of this “compensation of development,” of this “correlation of parts,” has been already set forth by Goethe, by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and other nature-philosophers. It rests mainly upon the fact that direct or actual adaptation cannot produce an important change in a single part of the body, without at the same time affecting the whole organism.

246The correlative adaptation between the reproductive organs and the other parts of the body deserves a very special consideration, because it is, above all others, likely to throw light upon the obscure and mysterious phenomena of indirect or potential adaptation, which have already been considered. For just as every change of the sexual organs powerfully reacts upon the rest of the body, so on the other hand every important change in another part of the body must necessarily more or less react on the sexual organs. This reaction, however, will only become perceptible in the formation of the offspring which arise out of the changed generative parts. It is, in fact, precisely those remarkable and imperceptible changes of the genital system (in themselves utterly insignificant changes)—changes of the eggs and the sperm—brought about by such correlations, which have the greatest influence upon the formation of the offspring, and all the phenomena of indirect or potential adaptation previously mentioned may in the end be traced to correlative adaptation.

A further series of remarkable examples of correlative adaptation is furnished by the different animals and plants which become degenerated through parasitic life or parasitism. No other change in the mode of life so much affects the shapes of organisms as the adoption of a parasitical life. Plants thereby lose their green leaves; as, for instance, our native parasitical plants, Orobanche, Lathræa, Monotropa. Animals which originally have lived freely and independently, but afterwards adopt a parasitical mode of life on other animals or plants, in the first place cease to use their organs of motion and their organs of sense. The loss of this activity is succeeded by the loss of247 the organs themselves, and thus we find, for example, many crabs, or crustacea, which in their youth possess a tolerably high degree of organization, viz., legs, antennæ, and eyes, in old age completely degenerate, living as parasites, without eyes, without apparatus of motion, and without antennæ. The lively, active form of youth, has become a shapeless, motionless lump. Only the most necessary organs of nutrition and propagation retain their activity; all the rest of the body has degenerated. Evidently these complete transformations are, to a large extent, the direct consequences of cumulative adaption, of the non-use and defective exercise of the organs, but a great portion of them must certainly be attributed also to correlative adaptation. (Compare Plate X. and XI.)

A seventh law of adaptation, the fourth in the group of direct adaptation, is the law of divergent adaptation. By this law we indicate the fact that parts originally formed alike have developed in different ways under the influence of external conditions. This law of adaptation is extremely important for the explanation of the phenomenon of division of labour, or polymorphism. We can see this very easily in our own selves; for instance, in the activity of our two hands. We usually accustom our right hand to quite different work from that which we give our left, and in consequence of the different occupation there arises a different formation of the two hands. The right hand, which we use much more than the left, shows a stronger development of the nerves, muscles, and bones. The same applies to the whole arm. In most human beings the bones and flesh of the right arm are, in consequence of their being more employed, stronger and heavier than248 those of the left arm. Now, as the special use of the right arm has been adopted and transmitted by inheritance for thousands of years among Europeans, the stronger shape and size of the right arm have already become hereditary. P. Harting, an excellent Dutch naturalist, has shown by measuring and weighing newly-born children, that even in them the right arm is more developed than the left.

According to the same law of divergent adaptation, both eyes also frequently develop differently. If, for example, a naturalist accustoms himself always to use one eye for the microscope (it is better to use the left), then that eye will acquire a power different from that of the other, and this division of labour is of great advantage. The one eye will become more short-sighted, and better suited for seeing things near at hand; the other eye becomes, on the contrary, more long-sighted, more acute for looking at an object in the distance. If, on the other hand, the naturalist alternately uses both eyes for the microscope, he will not acquire the short-sightedness of the one eye and the compensatory degree of long-sight in the other, which is attained by a wise distribution of these different functions of sight between the two eyes. Here then again the function, that is the activity, of originally equally-formed organs can become divergent by habit; the function reacts again upon the form of the organ, and thus we find, after a long duration of such an influence, a change in the more delicate parts and the relative growth of the divergent organs, which in the end becomes apparent even in their coarser outlines.

Divergent adaptation can very easily be perceived among plants, especially in creepers. Branches of one and the same creeping plant, which originally were formed alike,249 acquire a completely different form and extent, a completely different degree of curvature and diameter of spiral winding, according as they twine themselves round a thinner or a thicker bar. The divergent change of form of parts originally identical in form, which tending in different directions develop themselves under different external conditions, can be distinctly demonstrated in many other examples. As this divergent adaptation interacts with progressive inheritance, it becomes the cause of a division of labour among the different organs.

An eighth and last law of adaptation we may call the law of unlimited or infinite adaptation. By it we simply mean to express that we know of no limit to the variation of organic forms occasioned by the external conditions of existence. We can assert of no single part of an organism, that it is no longer variable, or that if it were subjected to new external conditions it would not be changed by them. It has never yet been proved by experience that there is a limit to variation. If, for example, an organ degenerates from non-use, this degeneration ends finally in a complete disappearance of the organ, as is the case with the eyes of many animals. On the other hand, we are able, by continual practice, habit, and the ever-increasing use of an organ, to bring it to a degree of perfection which we should at the beginning have considered to be impossible. If we compare the uncivilized savages with civilized nations, we find among the former a development of the organs of sense—sight, smell, and hearing—such as civilized nations can hardly conceive of. On the other hand, the brain, that is mental activity, among more civilized nations is developed to a degree of which the wild savages have no idea.

250There appears indeed to be a limit given to the adaptability of every organism, by the “type” of its tribe or phylum; that is, by the essential fundamental qualities of this tribe, which have been inherited from a common ancestor, and transmitted by conservative inheritance to all its descendants. Thus, for example, no vertebrate animal can acquire the ventral nerve-chord of articulate animals, instead of the characteristic spinal marrow of the vertebrate animals. However, within this hereditary primary form, within this inalienable type, the degree of adaptability is unlimited. The elasticity and fluidity of the organic form manifests itself, within the type, freely in all directions, and to an unlimited extent. But there are some animals, as, for example, the parasitically degenerate crabs and worms, which seem to pass even the limit of type, and have forfeited all the essential characteristics of their tribe by an astonishing degree of degeneration. As to the adaptability of man, it is, as in all other animals, also unlimited, and since it is manifested in him above all other animals, in the modifications of the brain, there can be absolutely no limit to the knowledge which man in a further progress of mental cultivation may not be able to exceed. The human mind, according to the law of unlimited adaptation, enjoys an infinite perspective of becoming ever more and more perfect.

These remarks are sufficient to show the extent of the phenomena of Adaptation, and the great importance to be attached to them. The laws of Adaptation, or the facts of Variation caused by the influence of external conditions, are just as important as the laws of Inheritance. All phenomena of Adaptation, in the end, can be traced to251 conditions of nutrition of the organism, in the same way as the phenomena of Inheritance are referable to conditions of reproduction; but the latter, as well as the former, may further be traced to chemical and physical, that is to mechanical, causes. According to Darwin’s Theory of Selection the new forms of organisms, the transformations which artificial selection produces in the state of cultivation, and which natural selection produces in the state of nature, arise solely by the interaction of such causes.
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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

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Interaction of the Two Organic Formative Causes, Inheritance and Adaptation.—Natural and Artificial Selection.—Struggle for Existence, or Competition for the Necessaries of Life.—Disproportion between the Number of Possible or Potential, and the Number of Real or Actual Individuals.—Complicated Correlations of all Neighbouring Organisms.—Mode of Action in Natural Selection.—Homochromic Selection as the Cause of Sympathetic Colourings.—Sexual Selection as the Cause of the Secondary Sexual Characters.—Law of Separation or Division of Labour (Polymorphism, Differentiation, Divergence of Characters).—Transition of Varieties into Species.—Idea of Species.—Hybridism.—Law of Progress or Perfectioning (Progressus, Teleosis).

In order to arrive at a right understanding of Darwinism, it is, above all, necessary that the two organic functions of Inheritance and Adaptation, which we spoke of in our last chapter, should be more closely examined. If we do not, on the one hand, examine the purely mechanical nature of these two physiological activities, and the various action of their different laws, and if, on the other hand, we do not consider how complicated the interaction of these different laws of Inheritance and Adaptation must be, we shall not be able to understand how these two functions, by themselves, have been able to produce all the variety of253 animal and vegetable forms, which, in fact, they have. We have, at least, hitherto been unable to discover any other formative causes besides these two, and if we rightly understand the necessary and infinitely complicated interaction of Inheritance and Adaptation, we do not require to look for other unknown causes for the change of organic forms. These two fundamental causes are, as far as we can see, completely sufficient.

Even long before Darwin had published his Theory of Selection, some naturalists, and especially Goethe, had assumed the interaction of two distinct formative tendencies—a conservative or preserving, and a progressive or changing formative tendency—as the causes of the variety of organic forms. The former was called by Goethe the centripetal or specifying tendency, the latter the centrifugal tendency, or the tendency to metamorphosis (p. 89). These two tendencies completely correspond with the two processes of Inheritance and Adaptation. Inheritance is the centripetal or internal formative tendency which strives to keep the organic form in its species, to form the descendants like the parents, and always to produce identical things from generation to generation. Adaptation, on the other hand, which counteracts inheritance, is the centrifugal or external formative tendency, which constantly strives to change the organic forms through the influence of the varying agencies of the outer world, to create new forms out of those existing, and entirely to destroy the constancy or permanency of species. Accordingly as Inheritance or Adaptation predominates in the struggle, the specific form either remains constant or changes into a new species. The degree of constancy of form in the different species of animals and254 plants, which obtains at any moment, is simply the necessary result of the momentary predominance which either of these two formative powers (or physiological activities) has acquired over the other.

If we now return to the consideration of the process of selection or choice, the outlines of which we have already examined, we shall be in a position to see clearly and distinctly that both artificial and natural selection rest solely upon the interaction of these two formative tendencies. If we carefully watch the proceedings of an artificial selector—a farmer or a gardener—we find that only these two constructive forces are used by him for the production of new forms. The whole art of artificial selection rests solely upon a thoughtful and wise application of the laws of Inheritance and Adaptation, and upon their being applied and regulated in an artistic and systematic manner. Here the will of man constitutes the selecting force.

The case of natural selection is quite similar, for it also employs merely these two organic constructive forces, these ingrained physiological properties of Adaptation and Heredity, in order to produce the different species. But the selecting principle or force, which in artificial selection is represented by the conscious will of man acting for a definite purpose, consists in natural selection of the unconscious struggle for existence acting without a definite plan. What we mean by “struggle for existence” has already been explained in the seventh chapter. It is the recognition of this exceedingly important identity which constitutes one of the greatest of Darwin’s merits. But as this relation is very frequently imperfectly or falsely understood, it is necessary to examine it now more closely, and to illustrate255 by a few examples the operation of the struggle for life, and the operation of natural selection by means of the struggle for life (Gen. Morph. ii. 231).

When considering the struggle for life, we started from the fact that the number of germs which all animals and plants produce is infinitely greater than the number of individuals which actually come to life and remain alive for a longer or shorter time. Most organisms produce during life thousands or millions of germs, from each of which, under favourable circumstances, a new individual might arise. In most animals and plants these germs are eggs, that is cells, which for their development require sexual fructification. But among the Protista, the lowest organisms, which are neither animals nor plants, and which propagate themselves only in a non-sexual manner, the germ-cells, or spores, require no fructification. Now, in all cases the number of unsexual, as well as of sexual germs, is out of all proportion to the number of actually living individuals of every species.

Taken as a whole, the number of living animals and plants on our earth remains always about the same. The number of places in the economy of nature is limited, and in most parts of the earth’s surface these places are always approximately occupied. Certainly there occur everywhere and in every year fluctuations in the absolute and in the relative number of individuals of all species. However, taken as a whole, these fluctuations are of little importance, and it is broadly the fact that the total number of all individuals remains, on an average, almost constant. There is a constant fluctuation, which depends on the fact that in one year or another one or other series of animals and plants256 predominates, and that every year the struggle for life somewhat alters their relations.

Every single species of animals and plants would have densely peopled the whole earth’s surface in a short time, if it had not had to struggle against a number of enemies and hostile influences. Even Linnæus calculated that if an annual plant only produced two seeds (and there is not one which produces so few), it would have yielded in twenty years a million of individuals. Darwin has calculated of elephants, which of all animals seem the slowest to increase, that in seven hundred and fifty years the descendants of a single pair would amount to nineteen millions of individuals; this is supposing that every elephant, during its period of fertility (from the 30th to the 90th year), produced only three pairs of young ones, and survived itself to its hundredth year. In like manner the increase of the number of human beings—if calculated on the average proportion of births to population, and no hindrances to the natural increase stood in the way—would be such as to double the total in twenty-five years. In every century the total number of men would have increased sixteen-fold; whereas we know that the total number of human beings increases but slowly, and that the increase of population is very different in different countries. While European tribes spread over the whole globe, other tribes or species of men every year draw nearer to their complete extinction. This is the case especially with the redskins of America, and with the copper-coloured natives of Australia. Even if these races were to propagate more abundantly than the white Europeans, yet they would sooner or later succumb to the latter in the struggle for life. But of all human257 individuals, as of all other organisms, by far the majority perish at the earliest period of their lives. Of the immense quantity of germs which every species produce, only very few actually succeed in developing, and of these few it is again only a very small portion which attain to the age in which they can reproduce themselves (compare p. 161).

From the disproportion between the immense excess of organic germs and the small number of chosen individuals which are actually able to continue in existence beside one another, there follows of necessity that universal struggle for life, that constant fight for existence, that perpetual competition for the necessaries of life, of which I gave a sketch in my seventh chapter. It is this struggle for life which brings natural selection into play, which in its turn is made use of by the interaction of the phenomena of Inheritance and Adaptation as a sifting agency, and which thus causes a continual change in all organic forms. In this struggle for acquiring the necessary conditions of existence, those individuals will always overpower their rivals who possess any individual privilege, any advantageous quality, of which their fellow competitors are destitute. It is true we are able only in the fewest cases (in those animals and plants best known to us) to form an approximate conception of the infinitely complicated interaction of the numerous circumstances, all of which here come into combination. Only think how infinitely varied and complicated are the relations of every single human being to the rest of mankind, and in general, to the whole of the surrounding outer world. But similar relations prevail also among all animals and plants which live together in one place. All influence one another258 actively or passively. Every animal and every plant struggles directly with a number of enemies, beasts of prey, parasitic animals, etc. Plants standing together struggle with one another for the space of ground requisite for their roots, for the necessary amount of light, air, moisture, etc. In like-manner, animals living together struggle with one another for their food, dwelling-place, etc. In this most active and complicated struggle, any personal superiority, however small, any individual advantage, may possibly decide the issue in favour of the one possessing it. This privileged individual remains the victor in the struggle, and propagates itself, while its fellow-competitors perish before they succeed in propagating themselves. The personal advantage which gave it the victory is transmitted by inheritance to its descendants, and by a further development may become so strongly marked as to cause us to consider the later generations as a new species.

The infinitely complicated correlations which exist between the organisms of every district, and which must be looked upon as the real conditions of the struggle for life, are mostly unknown to us, and are very difficult to discover. We have hitherto been able to trace them only to a certain point in individual cases, as in the example given by Darwin of the relations between cats and red clover in England. The red clover (Trifolium pratense), which in England is among the best fodder for cattle, requires the visit of humming-bees in order to attain the formation of seeds. These insects, while sucking the honey from the bottom of the flower, bring the pollen in contact with the stigma, and thus cause the fructification of the flower, which never takes place without it. Darwin has259 shown by experiments, that red clover which is not visited by humming-bees does not yield a single seed. The number of bees is determined by the number of their enemies, the most destructive of which are the field-mice. The more the field-mice predominate, the less the clover is fructified. The number of field-mice, again, is dependent upon the number of their enemies, principally cats. Hence in the neighbourhood of villages and towns, where many cats are kept, there are plenty of bees. A great number of cats, therefore, is evidently of great advantage for the fructification of clover. This example may be followed still further, as has been done by Carl Vogt, if we consider that cattle which feed on red clover are one of the most important foundations of the wealth of England. Englishmen preserve their bodily and mental powers chiefly by making excellent meat—roast beef and beefsteak—their principal food. The English owe the superiority of their brains and minds over those of other nations in a great measure to their excellent meat. But this is clearly indirectly dependent upon the cats, which pursue the mice. We may, with Huxley, even trace the chain of causes to those old maids who cherish and keep cats, and, consequently, are of the greatest importance to the fructification of the clover and to the prosperity of England. From this example we can see that the further it is traced the wider is the circle of action and of correlation. We can with certainty maintain that there exist a great number of such correlations in every plant and in every animal, only we are not always able to point out and survey their concatenation as in the last instance.

Another remarkable example of important correlations is the following, given by Darwin. In Paraguay, there are260 no wild oxen and horses, as in the neighbouring parts of South America, both north and south of Paraguay. This surprising circumstance is explained simply by the fact that in that country a kind of small fly is very frequent, and is in the habit of laying its eggs in the navel of newly-born calves and foals. The newly-born animals die in consequence of this attack, and the small deadly fly is therefore the cause of oxen and horses never becoming wild in that district. Supposing that this fly were destroyed by some insect-eating bird, then these large mammals would grow wild in Paraguay, as well as in the neighbouring parts of South America; and as they would eat a quantity of certain species of plants, the whole flora, and, consequently again, the whole fauna of the country would become changed. It is hardly necessary to state, that at the same time the whole economy, and consequently the character, of the human population would alter.

Thus the prosperity, nay, even the existence of whole populations can be indirectly determined by a single small animal or vegetable form in itself extremely insignificant. There are small coral islands whose human inhabitants live almost entirely upon the fruit of a species of palm. The fructification of this palm is principally effected by insects, which carry the pollen from the male to the female palm trees. The existence of these useful insects is endangered by insect-eating birds, which in their turn are pursued by birds of prey. The birds of prey, however, often succumb to the attack of a small parasitical mite, which develops itself in millions in their feathers. This small, dangerous parasite, again, may be killed by parasitical moulds. Moulds, birds of prey, and insects would in this case favour the prosperity261 of the palm, and consequently of man; birds, mites, and insect-eating birds would, on the other hand, endanger it.

Interesting examples in relation to the change of correlations in the struggle for life are furnished also by those isolated oceanic islands, uninhabited by man, on which at different times goats and pigs have been placed by navigators. These animals become wild, and having no enemies, they increase in number so excessively, that the rest of the animal and vegetable population suffer in consequence, and the island finally may become almost a waste, because there is insufficient food for the large mammals which increase too numerously. In some cases on an island thus overrun with goats and pigs, other navigators have let loose a couple of dogs, who enjoyed this superabundance of food, and they again increased so numerously, and made such havoc among the herds, that after several years the dogs themselves lacked food, and they also almost died out. The equilibrium of species continually changes in this manner in nature’s economy, accordingly as one or another species increases at the expense of the rest. In most cases the relations of different species of animals and plants to one another are much too complicated for us to be able to follow them, and I leave it to the reader to picture to himself what an infinitely complicated machinery is at work in every part of the world in consequence of this struggle. The impulses which started the struggle, and which altered and modified it in different places, are in the end seen to be the impulses of self-preservation—in fact, the instinct leading individuals to preserve themselves (the instinct of obtaining food), and the instinct leading them to preserve the species (instinct of propagation). It is these two fundamental instincts of262 organic self-preservation of which Schiller, the idealist (not Goethe, the realist!) says:

“Meanwhile, until philosophy
Sustains the structure of the world,
Her workings will be carried on
By hunger and by love.”4

It is these two powerful fundamental instincts which, by their varying activity, produce such extraordinary differences in species through the struggle for life. They are the foundations of the phenomena of Inheritance and Adaptation. We have, in fact, traced all phenomena of Inheritance to propagation, all phenomena of Adaptation to nutrition, as the two wider classes of material phenomena to which they belong.

The struggle for life in natural selection acts with as much selective power as does the will of man in artificial selection. The latter, however, acts according to a plan and consciously, the former without a plan and unconsciously. This important difference between artificial and natural selection deserves especial consideration. For we learn by it to understand how arrangements serving a purpose can be produced by mechanical causes acting without an object, as well as by causes acting for an object. The products of natural selection are arranged even more for a purpose than the artificial products of man, and yet they owe their existence not to a creative power acting for a definite purpose, but to a mechanical relation acting unconsciously 263 and without a plan. If we had not thoroughly considered the interaction of Inheritance and Adaptation under the influence of the struggle for life, we should not at first be inclined to expect such results from this natural process of selection as are, in fact, furnished by it. It may therefore be appropriate here to mention a few especially striking examples of the activity of natural selection.

Let us first take Darwin’s homochromic selection of animals, or the so-called “sympathetic selection of colours,” into consideration. Earlier naturalists have remarked that numerous animals are of nearly the same colour as their dwelling-place, or the surroundings in which they permanently live. Thus, for example, plant-lice and many other insects living on leaves are of a green colour. The inhabitants of the deserts, the jerboa, or leaping mice, foxes of the desert, gazelles, lions, etc., are mostly of a yellow or yellowish-brown colour, like the sand of the desert. The polar animals, which live on the ice and snow, are white or grey, like ice and snow. Many of these animals change their colour in summer and winter. In summer, when the snow partly vanishes, the fur of these polar creatures becomes brownish-grey or blackish, like the naked earth, while in winter it again becomes white. Butterflies and insects which hover round the gay and bright flowers are like them in colour. Now, Darwin explains this surprising circumstance quite simply by the fact that such colours as agree with the colour of the habitation are of the greatest use to the animals concerned. If these animals are animals of prey, they will be able to approach the object of their pursuit more safely and with less likelihood of observation, and, in like manner, those animals which are pursued will264 be able to escape more easily, if their colour is as little different as possible from that of their surroundings. If therefore originally an animal species varied so as to present cases of all colours, those individuals whose colour most resembled the surroundings must have been most favoured in the struggle for life. They remained more unobserved, maintained and propagated themselves, while those individuals or varieties differently coloured died out.

I have tried to explain, by the same sympathetic selection of colour, the wonderful fact that the majority of pelagic animals—that is, of those which live on the surface of the open sea—are bluish, or completely colourless and transparent, like glass and water itself. Such colourless, glassy animals are met with in the most different classes. To them belong, among fish, the Helmicthyidæ, through whose crystalline bodies the words of a book can be read; among the molluscs, the finned snails (Heteropods) and sea-butterflies, or whales-food (Pteropods); among worms, the Salpæ, Alciope, and Sagitta; further, a great number of pelagic crabs (Crustacea), and the greater part of the Medusæ Umbrella-jellies, (Discomedusæ); Comb-jellies, (Ctenophora). All of these pelagic animals, which float on the surface of the ocean, are transparent and colourless, like glass and like the water itself, while their nearest kin live at the bottom of the ocean, and are coloured and opaque like the inhabitants of the land. This remarkable fact, like the sympathetic colouring of the inhabitants of the earth, can be explained by natural selection. Among the ancestors of the pelagic glass-like animals which showed a different degree of colourlessness and transparency, those that were the most colourless and transparent must have been most favoured265 in the active struggle for life which takes place on the surface of the ocean. They were enabled to approach their prey the most easily unobserved, and were themselves least observed by their enemies. Hence they could preserve and propagate themselves more easily than their more coloured and opaque relatives; and finally, by accumulative adaptation and transmission by inheritance, through natural selection, in the course of many generations their bodies would attain that degree of crystal-like transparency and colourlessness which we at present admire in them. (Gen. Morph. ii. 242.)

No less interesting and instructive than homochromic selection is that species of natural selection which Darwin calls “sexual selection,” which explains the origin of the so-called “secondary sexual characters.” We have already mentioned these subordinate sexual characteristics, so instructive in many respects. They comprise those peculiarities of animals and plants which belong only to one of the two sexes, and which do not stand in any direct relation to the act of propagation itself (compare above, p. 244). Such secondary sexual characters occur in great variety among animals. We all know how striking is the difference of the two sexes in size and colour in many birds and butterflies. The male sex is generally the larger and more beautiful. It often possesses special decorations or weapons; as for example, the spur and comb of the cock, the antlers of the stag and deer, etc. All these peculiarities of the two sexes have nothing directly to do with propagation itself, which is effected by the “primary sexual characters,” or actual sexual organs.

Now, the origin of these remarkable “secondary sexual characters” is explained by Darwin simply by a choice or266 selection which takes place in the propagation of animals. In most animals the number of individuals of both sexes is unequal; either the number of the female or the number of the male individuals is greater, and, as a rule, when the season of propagation approaches, a struggle takes place between the rivals for the possession of the animals of the other sex. It is well known with what vigour and vehemence this struggle is fought out among the higher animals—among mammals and birds—especially among those of polygamous habits. Among gallinaceous birds, where for one cock there are several hens, a severe struggle takes place between the competing cocks for as large a harem as possible. The same is the case with many ruminating animals. Among stags and deer, for instance, at the period of rut, deadly struggles take place between the males for the possession of the females. The secondary sexual character which here distinguishes the males—the antlers of stags and deer—not possessed by the female, is, according to Darwin, the consequence of that struggle. Here the motive and cause determining the struggle is not, as in the case of the struggle for individual existence, self-preservation, but the preservation of the species—propagation. There are numerous passive weapons of defence, as well as active weapons for attack. The lion’s mane, not possessed by the female, is evidently such a weapon of defence; it is an excellent means of protection against the bites which the male lions try to inflict on each other’s necks when fighting for the females; consequently those males with the strongest manes have the greatest advantage in the sexual struggle. The dewlap of the ox and the comb of the cock are similar defensive weapons. Active weapons of attack, on the other267 hand, are the antlers of the stag, the tusks of the boar, the spur of the cock, and the hugely developed pair of jaws in the male stag-beetle; all are instruments employed by the males in the struggle for the females, for annihilating or chasing away their rivals.

In the cases just mentioned, it is the bodily “struggle to the death” which determines the origin of the secondary sexual characters. But, besides these mortal struggles, there are other important competitions in sexual selection, which no less influence the structure of the rivals. These consist principally in the fact that the courting sex tries to please the other by external finery, by beauty of form, or by a melodious voice. Darwin thinks that the beautiful voices of singing birds have principally originated in this way. Many male birds carry on a regular musical contest when they contend for the possession of the females. It is known of several singing birds, that in the breeding season the males assemble in numbers round the females, and let their songs resound before them, and that then the females choose the singers who best please them for their mates. Among other songsters, individual males pour out their songs in the loneliness of the forest in order to attract the females, and the latter follow the most attractive calls. A similar musical contest, though certainly less melodious, takes place among crickets and grasshoppers. The male cricket has on its belly two instruments like drums, and produces with these the sharp chirping notes which the ancient Greeks curiously enough thought beautiful music. Male grasshoppers, partly by using their hind-legs like the bow of a violin against their wing coverings, and partly by rubbing their wing coverings together, bring out tones which are, indeed, not268 melodious to us, but which please the female grasshoppers so much that they choose the male who fiddles the best.

Among other insects and birds it is not song or, in fact, any musical accomplishment, but finery or beauty of the one sex which attracts the other. Thus we find that, among most gallinaceous birds, the cocks are distinguished by combs on their heads, or by a beautiful tail, which they can spread out like a fan; as for example, in the case of the peacock and turkey-cock. The magnificent tail of the bird of paradise is also an exclusive ornament of the male sex. In like manner, among very many other birds and very many insects, principally among butterflies, the males are distinguished from the females by special colours or other decorations. These are evidently the results of sexual selection. As the females do not possess these attractions and decorations, we must come to the conclusion that they have been acquired by degrees by the males in the competition for the females, which takes its origin in the selective discrimination of the females.

We may easily picture to ourselves, in detail, the application of this interesting conclusion to the human community. Here, also, the same causes have evidently influenced the development of the secondary sexual characters. The characteristics distinguishing the man, as well as those distinguishing the woman, owe their origin, certainly for the most part, to the sexual selection of the other sex. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, especially in the romantic age of chivalry, it was the bodily struggles to the death—the tournaments and duels—which determined the choice of the bride; the strongest carried home the bride. In more recent times, however, in our so-called “polished” or “highly civilized”269 society, competing rivals prefer to contend indirectly by means of musical accomplishments, instrumental performances and song, by bodily charms, natural beauty, or artificial decoration. But by far the most important of these different forms of sexual selection in man is that form which is the most exalted, namely, psychical selection, in which the mental excellencies of the one sex influence and determine the choice of the other. The most highly intellectually developed types of men have, throughout generations, when choosing a partner in life, been guided by her excellencies of soul, and have thus transmitted these qualities to their posterity, and they have in this way, more than by any other thing, helped to create the deep chasm which at present separates civilized men from the rudest savages, and from our common animal ancestors. In fact, both the part played by the prevalence of a higher standard of sexual selection, and the part played by the due division of labour between the two sexes, is exceedingly important, and I believe that here we must seek for the most powerful causes which have determined the origin and the historical development of the races of man. (Gen. Morph. ii. 247.) As Darwin, in his exceedingly interesting work, published in 1871, on “The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection,”(48) has discussed this subject in the most masterly manner, and has illustrated it by most remarkable examples, I refer for further detail to that work.

But now let us look again at two extremely important organic laws which can be explained by the theory of selection, as necessary consequences of natural selection in the struggle for existence. I mean the law of division of labour, or differentiation, and the law of progress, or270 perfecting. When the phenomena due to these two laws first became known, through observation of the historical development, the individual development, and the comparative anatomy of animals and plants, naturalists were inclined to trace them to a direct creative influence. It was supposed to be part of the plan of the Creator, acting for a definite purpose, in the course of time to develop the forms of animals and plants more and more variously, and to bring them more and more to a state of perfection. We shall evidently make a great advance in the knowledge of nature if we reject this teleological and anthropomorphic conception, and if we can prove the two laws of Division of Labour and Perfecting to be the necessary consequences of natural selection in the struggle for life.

The first great law which follows directly and of necessity from natural selection, is that of separation, or differentiation, which is frequently called division of labour, or polymorphism, and which Darwin speaks of as divergence of character. (Gen. Morph. ii. 249.) We understand by it the general tendency of all organic individuals to develop themselves more and more diversely, and to deviate from the common primary type. The cause of this general inclination towards differentiation and the formation of heterogeneous forms from homogeneous beginnings is, according to Darwin, simply to be traced to the circumstance that the struggle for life between every two organisms rages all the more fiercely the nearer the relation in which they stand to one another, or the more nearly alike they are. This is an exceedingly important, and in reality an exceedingly simple relation, but it is usually not duly considered.

It must be obvious to every one, that in a field of a certain size, beside the corn-plants which have been sown, a271 great number of weeds can exist, and, moreover, in places which could not have been occupied by corn-plants. The more dry and sterile places of the ground, in which no corn-plant would thrive, may still furnish sustenance to weeds of different kinds; and such species and individuals of weeds will more readily be able to exist in such conditions, in proportion as they are suited to adapt themselves to the different parts of the ground. It is the same with animals. It is evident that a much greater number of animal individuals can live together in one and the same limited district, if they are of various and different natures, than if they are all alike. There are trees (for example, the oak) on which a couple of hundred of different species of insects live together. Some feed on the fruits of the tree, others on the leaves, others again on the bark, the root, etc. It would be quite impossible for an equal number of individuals to live on this tree if all were of one species; if, for example, all fed on the bark, or only upon the leaves. Exactly the same is the case in human society. In one and the same small town, only a certain number of workmen can exist, even when they follow different occupations. The division of labour, which is of the greatest use to the whole community, as well as to the individual workman, is a direct consequence of the struggle for life, of natural selection; for this struggle can be sustained more easily the more the activities, and hence, also, the forms of the different individuals deviate from one another. The different function naturally produces its reaction in changing the form, and the physiological division of labour necessarily determines the morphological differentiation, that is, the “divergence of character.”(37)

Now, I beg the reader again to remember that all species272 of animals and plants are variable, and possess the capability of adapting themselves to different places or to local relations. The varieties or races of each species, according to the laws of adaptation, deviate all the more from the original primary species, the greater the difference of the new conditions to which they adapt themselves. If we imagine these varieties—which have proceeded from a common primary form—to be disposed in the shape of a branching, radiating bunch, then those varieties will be best able to exist side by side and propagate which are most distant from one another, which stand at the ends of the series, or at the opposite sides of the bunch. Those forms, on the other hand, occupying a middle position—presenting a state of transition—have the most difficult position in the struggle for life. The necessaries of life differ most in the two extremes, in the varieties most distant from one another, and consequently these will get into the least serious conflict with one another in the general struggle for life. But the intermediate forms, which have deviated less from the original primary form, require nearly the same necessaries of life as the original form, and therefore, in competing for them, they will have to struggle most with, and be most seriously threatened by, its members. Consequently, when numerous varieties of a species live side by side on the same spot of the earth, the extremes, or those forms deviating most from one another, can much more easily continue to exist beside one another than the intermediate forms which have to struggle with each of the different extremes. The intermediate forms will not be able to resist, for any length of time, the hostile influences which the extreme forms victoriously overcome. These alone maintain and propagate273 themselves, and at length cease to be any longer connected with the original primary species through intermediate forms of transition. Thus arise “good species” out of varieties. Thus, then, the struggle for life necessarily favours the general divergence of organic forms, that is, the constant tendency of organisms to form new species. This fact does not rest upon any mystic quality, or upon an unknown formative tendency, but upon the interaction of Inheritance and Adaptation in the struggle for life. As the intermediate forms, that is, the individuals in a state of transition, of the varieties of every species die out and become extinct, the process of divergence constantly goes further, and from the extremes forms develop which we distinguish as new species.

Although all naturalists have been obliged to acknowledge the variability and mutability of all species of animals and plants, yet most of them have hitherto denied that the modification or transformation of the organic form surpasses the original limit of the characters of the species. Our opponents cling to the proposition—“However far a species may exhibit deviations from its usual form in a collection of varieties, yet the varieties of it are never so distinct from one another as two really good species.” This assertion, which Darwin’s opponents usually place at the head of their arguments, is utterly untenable and unfounded. This will become quite clear as soon as we critically compare the various attempts to define the idea of species. No naturalist can answer the question as to what is in reality a “genuine or good species” (“bona species”); yet every systematic naturalist uses this expression every day, and whole libraries have been written on the question as to274 whether this or that observed form is a species or a variety, whether it is a really good or a bad species. The most general answer to this question used to be the following: “To one species belong all those individuals which agree in all essential characteristics. Essential characteristics of species are those which remain permanent or constant, and never become modified or vary.” But as soon as a case occurred in which the characteristic—which had hitherto been considered essential—did become modified, then it was said, “This characteristic is not essential to the species, for essential characteristics never vary.” Those who argued thus evidently moved in a circle, and the naïveté with which this circular method of defining species is laid down in thousands of books as an unassailable truth, and is still constantly repeated, is truly astonishing.

All other attempts which have been made to arrive at a definite and logical determination of the idea of organic “species” have, like the last, been utterly futile, and led to no results. Considering the nature of the case, it cannot be otherwise. The idea of species is just as truly a relative one and not absolute, as is the idea of variety, genus, family, order, class, etc. I have proved this in detail in the criticism of the idea of species in my “General Morphology” (Gen. Morph. ii. 323-364). I will waste no more time on this unsatisfactory discussion, and now only add a few words about the relation of species to hybridism. Formerly it was regarded as a dogma, that two good species could never produce hybrids which could reproduce themselves as such. Those who thus dogmatized almost always appealed to the hybrids of a horse and donkey, the mule and the hinny, which, truly enough, are seldom able to reproduce275 themselves. But the truth is that such unfruitful hybrids are rare examples, and in the majority of cases hybrids of two totally different species are fruitful and able to reproduce themselves. They can almost always fruitfully mix with one or other of the parent species, and sometimes also among themselves; and in this way completely new forms can originate according to the laws of “mixed transmission by inheritance.”

Thus, in fact, hybridism is a source of the origin of new species, distinct from the source we have hitherto considered—natural selection. I have already spoken occasionally of these hybrid species (species hybridæ), especially of the hare-rabbit (Lepus Darwinii), which has arisen from the crossing of a male hare and a female rabbit; the goat-sheep (Capra ovina), which has arisen from the pairing of a he-goat and ewe; also the different species of thistles (Cirsium), brambles (Rubus), etc. It is possible that many wild species have originated in this way, as even Linnæus assumed. At all events, these hybrid species, which can maintain and propagate themselves as well as pure species, prove that hybridism cannot serve in any way to give an absolute definition to the idea of species.

I have already mentioned (p. 47) that the many vain attempts to define the idea of species theoretically have nothing whatever to do with the practical distinction of species. The extensive practical application of the idea of species, as it is carried out in systematic zoology and botany, is very instructive as furnishing an example of human folly. Hitherto, by far the majority of zoologists and botanists, in distinguishing and describing the different forms of animals and plants, have endeavoured, above all things, to distinguish 276 accurately kindred forms as so many “good species.” However, it has been found scarcely possible, in any group, to make an accurate and consistent distinction of such “genuine or good species.” There are no two zoologists, no two botanists, who agree in all cases as to which of the nearly related forms of a genus are good species, and which are not. All authors have different views about them. In the genus Hieracium, for example, one of the commonest genera of European plants, no less than 300 species have been distinguished in Germany alone. The botanist Fries, however, only admits 106, Koch only 52, as “good species,” and others accept scarcely 20. The differences in the species of brambles (Rubus) are equally great. Where one botanist makes more than a hundred species, a second admits only about one half of that number, a third only five or six, or even fewer species. The birds of Germany have long been very accurately known. Bechstein, in his careful “Natural History of German Birds,” has distinguished 367 species, L. Reichenbach 379, Meyer and Wolff 406, and Brehm, a clergyman learned in ornithology, distinguishes even more than 900 different species.

Thus we see that here, and, in fact, in every other domain of systematic zoology and botany, the most arbitrary proceedings prevail, and, from the nature of the case, must prevail. For it is quite impossible accurately to distinguish varieties and races from so-called “good species.” Varieties are commencing species. The variability or adaptability of species, under the influence of the struggle for life, necessitates the continual and progressive separation or differentiation of varieties, and the perpetual delimitation of new forms. Whenever these are maintained throughout a number of277 generations by inheritance, whilst the intermediate forms die out, they form independent “new species.” The origin of new species by division of labour, or separation, divergence, or differentiation of varieties, is therefore a necessary consequence of natural selection.(37)

The same kind of interest attaches to a second great law which we deduce from natural selection, and which is, indeed, closely connected with the law of Divergence, but in no way identical with it; namely, the law of Progress (progressus), or Perfecting (teleosis). (Gen. Morph. ii. 257.) This great and important law, like the law of differentiation, had long been empirically established by palæontological experience, before Darwin’s Theory of Selection gave us the key to the explanation of its cause. The most distinguished palæontologists have pointed out the law of progress as the most general result of their investigations of fossil organisms. This has been specially done by Bronn, whose investigations on the laws of construction(18) and the laws of the development(19) of organisms, although little heeded, are excellent, and deserve most careful consideration. The general results of the law of differentiation and the law of progress, at which Bronn arrived by a purely mechanical hypothesis, and by exceedingly accurate, laborious, and careful investigations, are brilliant confirmations of the truth of these two great laws which we deduce as necessary inferences from the theory of selection.

The law of progress or of perfecting establishes the exceedingly important fact, on the ground of palæontological experience, that in successive periods of this earth’s history, a continual increase in the perfection of organic formations has taken place. Since that inconceivably278 remote period in which life on our planet began with the spontaneous generation of Monera, organisms of all groups, both collectively as well as individually, have continually become more perfectly and highly developed. The steadily increasing variety of living forms has always been accompanied by progress in organization. The lower the strata of the earth in which the remains of extinct animals and plants lie buried, that is, the older the strata are, the more simple and imperfect are the forms which they contain. This applies to organisms collectively, as well as to every single large or small group of them, setting aside, of course, those exceptions which are due to the process of degeneration, which we shall discuss hereafter.

As a confirmation of this law I shall mention only the most important of all animal groups, the tribe of vertebrate animals. The oldest fossil remains of vertebrate animals known to us belong to the lowest class, that of Fishes. Upon these there followed later more perfect Amphibious animals, then Reptiles, and lastly, at a much later period, the most highly organized classes of vertebrate animals, Birds and Mammals. Of the latter only the lowest and most imperfect forms, without placenta, appeared at first, such as are the pouched animals (Marsupials), and afterwards, at a much later period, the more perfect mammals, with placenta. Of these, also, at first only the lower kinds appeared, the higher forms later; and not until the late tertiary period did man gradually develop out of these last.

If we follow the historical development of the vegetable kingdom we shall find the same law operative there. Of plants there existed at first only the lowest and most imperfect classes, the Algæ or tangles. Later there followed279 the group of Ferns or Filicinæ (ferns, pole-reeds, scale-plants, etc.). But as yet there existed no flowering plants, or Phanerogama. These originated later with the Gymnosperms (firs and cycads), whose whole structure stands far below that of the other flowering plants (Angiosperms), and forms the transition from the group of fern-like plants to the Angiosperms. These latter developed at a still later date, and among them there were at first only flowering plants without corolla (Monocotyledons and Monochlamyds); only later were there flowering plants with a corolla (Dichlamyds). Finally, again, among these the lower polypetalous plants preceded the higher gamopetalous plants. The whole series thus constitutes an irrefutable proof of the great law of progressive development.

Now, if we ask what is the cause of this fact, we again, just as in the case of differentiation, come back to natural selection in the struggle for life. If once more we consider the whole process of natural selection, how it operates through the complicated interaction of the different laws of Inheritance and Adaptation, we shall recognize not only divergence of character, but also the perfecting of structure to be the direct and necessary result of it. We can trace the same thing in the history of the human race. Here, too, it is natural and necessary that the progressive division of labour constantly furthers mankind, and urges every individual branch of human activity into new discoveries and improvements. This progress itself universally depends on differentiation, and is consequently, like it, a direct result of natural selection in the struggle for life.
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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

Postby admin » Sat Mar 03, 2018 9:17 am

Part 1 of 2


Laws of the Development of Mankind: Differentiation and Perfecting.—Mechanical Cause of these two Fundamental Laws.—Progress without Differentiation, and Differentiation without Progress.—Origin of Rudimentary Organs by Non-use and Discontinuance of Habit.—Ontogenesis, or Individual Development of Organisms.—Its General Importance.—Ontogeny, or the Individual History of Development of Vertebrate Animals, including Man.—The Fructification of the Egg.—Formation of the three Germ Layers.—History of the Development of the Central Nervous System, of the Extremities, of the Branchial Arches, and of the Tail of Vertebrate Animals.—Causal Connection and Parallelism of Ontogenesis and Phylogenesis, that is of the Development of Individuals and Tribes.—Causal Connection of the Parallelism of Phylogenesis and of Systematic Development.—Parallelism of the three Organic Series of Development.

If man wishes to understand his position in nature, and to comprehend as natural facts his relations to the phenomena of the world cognisable by him, it is absolutely necessary that he should compare human with extra-human phenomena, and, above all, with animal phenomena. We have already seen that the exceedingly important physiological laws of Inheritance and Adaptation apply to the human organism in the same manner as to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and in both cases interact with one another. Consequently, natural selection in the struggle281 for life acts so as to transform human society, just as it modifies animals and plants, and in both cases constantly produces new forms. The comparison of the phenomena of human and animal transformation is especially interesting in connection with the laws of divergence and progress, the two fundamental laws which, at the end of the last chapter, we proved to be direct and necessary consequences of natural selection in the struggle for life.

A comparative survey of the history of nations, or what is called “universal history,” will readily yield to us, as the first and most general result, evidence of a continually increasing variety of human activities, both in the life of individuals and in that of families and states. This differentiation or separation, this constantly increasing divergence of human character and the form of human life, is caused by the ever advancing and more complete division of labour among individuals. While the most ancient and lowest stages of human civilization show us throughout the same rude and simple conditions, we see in every succeeding period of history, among different nations, a greater variety of customs, practices, and institutions. The increasing division of labour necessitates an increasing variety of forms corresponding to it. This is expressed even in the formation of the human face. Among the lowest tribes of nations, most of the individuals resemble one another so much that European travellers often cannot distinguish them at all. With increasing civilization the physiognomy of individuals becomes differentiated, and finally, among the most highly civilized nations, the English and Germans, the divergence in the characters of the face is so great that we very rarely mistake one face for another.282

The second great fundamental law which is obvious in the history of nations is the great law of progress or perfecting. Taken as a whole, the history of man is the history of his progressive development. It is true that everywhere and at all times we may notice individual retrogressions, or observe that crooked roads towards progress have been taken, which lead only towards one-sided and external perfecting, and thus deviate more and more from the higher goal of internal and enduring perfecting. However, on the whole, the movement of development of all mankind is and remains a progressive one, inasmuch as man continually removes himself further from his ape-like ancestors, and continually approaches nearer to his own ideal.

Now, if we wish to know what causes actually determine these two great laws of development in man, namely, the law of divergence and the law of progress, we must compare them with the corresponding laws of development in animals, and on a close examination we shall inevitably come to the conclusion that the phenomena, as well as their causes, are exactly the same in the two cases. The course of development in man, just as in that of animals, being directed by the two fundamental laws of differentiation and perfecting, is determined solely by purely mechanical causes, and is solely the necessary consequence of natural selection in the struggle for life.

Perhaps in the preceding discussion the question has presented itself to some—“Are not these two laws identical? Is not progress in all cases necessarily connected with divergence?” This question has often been answered in the affirmative, and Carl Ernst Bär, for example, one of the greatest investigators in the domain of the history of development, 283 has set forth the following proposition as one of the principal laws in the ontogenesis of the animal body:—“The degree of development (or perfecting) depends on the stage of separation (or differentiation) of the parts.”(20) Correct as this proposition may be on the whole, yet it is not universally true. In many individual cases it can be proved that divergence and progress by no means always coincide. Every progress is not a differentiation, and every differentiation is not a progress.

Naturalists, guided by purely anatomical considerations, had already set forth the law relating to progress in organization, that the perfecting of an organism certainly depends, for the most part, upon the division of labour among the individual organs and parts of the body, but that there are also other organic transformations which determine a progress in organization. One, in particular, which has been generally recognized, is the numerical diminution of identical parts. If, for example, we compare the lower articulated animals of the crustacean group, which possess numerous pairs of legs, with spiders which never have more than four pairs of legs, and with insects which always possess only three pairs of legs, we find this law, for which a great number of examples could be adduced, confirmed. The numerical diminution of pairs of legs is a progress in the organization of articulated animals. In like manner the numerical diminution of corresponding vertebral joints in the trunk of vertebrate animals is a progress in their organization. Fishes and amphibious animals with a very large number of identical vertebral joints are, for this very reason, less perfect and lower than birds and mammals, in which the vertebral joints, as a284 whole, are not only very much more differentiated, but in which the number of corresponding vertebræ is also much smaller. Further, according to the same law of numerical diminution, flowers with numerous stamens are more imperfect than the flowers of kindred plants with a smaller number of stamens, etc. If therefore originally a great number of homogeneous parts exist in an organic body, and if, in the course of very many generations, this number be gradually decreased, this transformation will be an example of perfecting.

Another law of progress, which is quite independent of differentiation, nay, even appears to a certain extent opposed to it, is the law of centralization. In general the whole organism is the more perfect the more it is organized as a unit, the more the parts are subordinate to the whole, and the more the functions and their organs are centralized. Thus, for example, the system of blood-vessels is most perfect where a centralized heart exists. In like manner, the dense mass of marrow which forms the spinal cord of vertebrate animals, and the ventral cord of the higher articulated animals, is more perfect than the decentralized chain of ganglia of the lower articulated animals, and the scattered system of ganglia in the molluscs. Considering the difficulty of explaining these complicated laws of progress in detail, I cannot here enter upon a closer discussion of them, and must refer to Bronn’s excellent “Morphologischen Studien,” and to my “General Morphology” (Gen. Morph. i. 370, 550; ii. 257-266).

Just as we have become acquainted with phenomena of progress, quite independent of divergence, so we shall, on the other hand, very often meet with divergencies which285 are not perfecting, but which are rather the contrary, that is retrogressions or degenerations. It is easy to see that the changes which every species of animal and plant experiences cannot always be improvements. But rather many phenomena of differentiation, which are of direct advantage to the organism itself, are yet, in a wider sense, detrimental, inasmuch as they lessen its general capabilities. Frequently a relapse to simpler conditions of life takes place, and by adaptation to them a divergence in a retrograde direction. If, for instance, organisms which have hitherto lived independently accustom themselves to a parasitical life, they thereby degenerate or retrograde. Such animals, which hitherto had possessed a well-developed nervous system and quick organs of sense, as well as the power of moving freely, lose these when they accustom themselves to a parasitical mode of life; they consequently retrograde more or less. There the differentiation viewed by itself is a degeneration, although it is advantageous to the parasitical organism. In the struggle for life such an animal, which has accustomed itself to live at the expense of others, by retaining its eyes and apparatus of motion, which are of no more use to it, would only expend so much material uselessly; and when it loses these organs, then a great quantity of nourishment which was employed for the maintenance of these parts, benefits other parts. In the struggle for life between the different parasites, therefore, those which make least pretensions will have advantage over the others, and this favours their degeneration.

Just as this is found to be the case with the whole organism, so it is also with the parts of the body of an individual organism. A differentiation of parts, which286 leads to a partial degeneration, and finally even to the loss of individual organs, is, when looked at by itself, a degeneration, but yet may be advantageous to the organism in the struggle for life. It is easier to fight when useless baggage is thrown aside. Hence we meet everywhere, in the more highly-developed animal and vegetable bodies, processes of divergence, the essence of which is that they cause the degeneration, and finally the loss, of particular parts. And at this point the most important and instructive of all the series of phenomena bearing upon the history of organisms presents itself to us, namely, that of rudimentary or degenerate organs.

It will be remembered that even in my first chapter I considered this exceedingly remarkable series of phenomena, from a theoretical point of view, as one of the most important and most striking proofs of the truth of the doctrine of descent. We designated as rudimentary organs those parts of the body which are arranged for a definite purpose and yet are without function. Let me remind the reader of the eyes of those animals which live in the dark in caves and underground, and which consequently never can use them. In these animals we find real eyes hidden under the skin, frequently developed exactly as are the eyes of animals which really see; and yet these eyes never perform any function, indeed cannot, simply for the reason that they are covered by an opaque membrane, and consequently no ray of light falls upon them (compare above, p. 13). In the ancestors of these animals, which lived in open daylight, the eyes were well developed, covered by a transparent horny capsule (cornea), and actually served the purpose of287 seeing. But as the animals gradually accustomed themselves to an underground mode of life, and withdrew from the daylight and no longer used their eyes, these became degenerated.

Very clear examples of rudimentary organs, moreover, are the wings of animals which cannot fly; for example, the wings of the running birds, like the ostrich, emeu, cassowary, etc., the legs of which have become exceedingly developed. These birds having lost the habit of flying, have consequently lost the use of their wings; however, the wings are still there, although in a crippled form. We very frequently find such crippled wings in the class of insects, most members of which can fly.

From reasons derived from comparative anatomy and other circumstances, we can with certainty draw the inference that all insects now living (all dragon-flies, grasshoppers, beetles, bees, bugs, flies, butterflies, etc.) have originated from a single common parental form, from a primary insect which possessed two well-developed pairs of wings, and three pairs of legs. Yet there are very many insects in which either one or both pairs of wings have become more or less degenerated, and many in which they have even completely disappeared. For example, in the whole order of flies, or Diptera, the hinder pair of wings—in the bee-parasites, or Strepsiptera, on the other hand, the fore pair of wings—have become degenerated or entirely disappeared. Moreover, in every order of insects we find individual genera, or species, in which the wings have more or less degenerated or disappeared. The latter is the case especially in parasites. The females have frequently no wings, whereas the males have; for instance, in the case of glow-worms 288 (Lampyris), Strepsiptera, etc. This partial or complete degeneration of the wings of insects has evidently arisen from natural selection in the struggle for life. For we find insects without wings living under circumstances where flying would be useless, or even decidedly injurious to them. If, for example, insects living on islands fly about much, it may easily happen that when flying they are blown into the sea by the wind, and if (as is always the case) the power of flying is differently developed in different individuals, then those which fly badly have an advantage over those which fly well; they are less easily blown into the sea, and remain longer in life than the individuals of the same species which fly well. In the course of many generations, by the action of natural selection, this circumstance must necessarily lead to a complete suppression of the wings. If this conclusion had been arrived at on purely theoretical grounds, we might be pleased to find its truth established by facts. For upon isolated islands the proportion of wingless insects to those possessing wings is surprisingly large, much larger than among the insects inhabiting continents. Thus, for example, according to Wollaston, of the 550 species of beetles which inhabit the island of Madeira, 220 are wingless, or possess such imperfect wings that they can no longer fly; and of the 29 genera which belong to that island exclusively, no less than 23 contain such species only. It is evident that this remarkable circumstance does not need to be explained by the special wisdom of the Creator, but is sufficiently accounted for by natural selection, because in this case the hereditary disuse of the wings, the discontinuance of flying in the presence of dangerous winds, has been very advantageous in the289 struggle for life. In other wingless insects the want of wings has been advantageous for other reasons. Viewed by itself, the loss of wings is a degeneration, but in these special conditions of life it is advantageous to the organism in the struggle for life.

Among other rudimentary organs I may here, by way of example, further mention the lungs of serpents and serpent-like lizards. All vertebrate animals possessing lungs, such as amphibious animals, reptiles, birds, and mammals, have a pair of lungs, a right and a left one. But in cases where the body is exceedingly thin and elongated, as in serpents and serpent-like lizards, there is no room for the one lung by the side of the other, and it is an evident advantage to the mechanism of respiration if only one lung is developed. A single large lung here accomplishes more than two small ones side by side would do; and consequently, in these animals, we invariably find only the right or only the left lung fully developed. The other is completely aborted, although existing as a useless rudiment. In like manner, in all birds the right ovary is aborted and without function; only the left one is developed, and yields all the eggs.

I mentioned in the first chapter that man also possesses such useless and superfluous rudimentary organs, and I specified as such the muscles which move the ears. Another of them is the rudiment of the tail which man possesses in his 3—5 tail vertebræ, and which, in the human embryo, stands out prominently during the first two months of its development (compare Plates II. and III.). It afterwards becomes completely hidden. The rudimentary little tail of man is an irrefutable proof of the fact that he is descended from tailed ancestors. In woman the tail is generally290 by one vertebra longer than in man. There still exist rudimentary muscles in the human tail which formerly moved it.

Another case of human rudimentary organs, only belonging to the male, and which obtains in like manner in all male mammals, is furnished by the mammary glands on the breast, which, as a rule, are active only in the female sex. However, cases of different mammals are known, especially of men, sheep, and goats, in which the mammary glands were fully developed in the male sex, and yielded milk as food for their offspring. I have already mentioned before (p. 12) that the rudimentary auricular muscles in man can still be employed to move their ears, by some persons who have persevering]y practised them. In fact, rudimentary organs are frequently very differently developed in different individuals of the same species; in some they are tolerably large, in others very small. This circumstance is very important for their explanation, as is also the other circumstance that generally in embryos, or in a very early period of life, they are much larger and stronger in proportion to the rest of the body than they are in fully developed and fully grown organisms. This can, in particular, be easily pointed out in the rudimentary sexual organs of plants (stamens and pistil), which I have already mentioned. They are proportionately much larger in the young flower-bud than in the mature flower.

I have remarked (p. 15) that rudimentary or suppressed organs were the strongest supports of the monistic or mechanical conception of the universe. If its opponents, the dualists and teleologists, understood the immense significance of rudimentary organs, it would put them into a state291 of despair. Their ludicrous attempts to explain that rudimentary organs were given to organisms by the Creator “for the sake of symmetry,” or “as a formal provision,” or “in consideration of his general plan of creation,” sufficiently prove the utter impotence of their perverse conception of the universe. I must here repeat that, even if we knew absolutely nothing of the other phenomena of development, we should be obliged to believe in the truth of the Theory of Descent, solely on the ground of the existence of rudimentary organs. Not one of its opponents has been able to throw even a feeble glimmer of an acceptable explanation upon these exceedingly remarkable and important phenomena. There is scarcely any highly developed animal or vegetable form which has not some rudimentary organs, and in most cases it can be shown that they are the products of natural selection, and that they have become suppressed by disuse. It is the reverse of the process of formation in which new organs arise from adaptation to certain conditions of life, and by the use of parts as yet incompletely developed. It is true our opponents usually maintain that the origin of altogether new parts is completely inexplicable by the Theory of Descent. However, I distinctly assert that to those who possess a knowledge of comparative anatomy and physiology this matter does not present the slightest difficulty. Every one who is familiar with comparative anatomy and the history of development will find as little difficulty about the origin of completely new organs as about the utter disappearance of rudimentary organs. The disappearance of the latter, viewed by itself, is the converse of the origin of the former. Both processes are particular phenomena of differentiation, which, like all others, can be explained quite292 simply and mechanically by the action of natural selection in the struggle for life.

The infinitely important study of rudimentary organs and their origin, the comparison of their palæontological and embryological development, now naturally leads us to the consideration of one of the most important and instructive of all biological phenomena, namely, the parallelism which the phenomena of progress and divergence present to us in three different series. When, in the last chapter, we spoke of perfecting and division of labour, we understood by those words progress and separation, and those changes effected by them, which in the long and slow course of the earth’s history have led to a continual variation of the flora and fauna, to the origin of new and to the disappearance of ancient species of animals and plants. Now, if we follow the origin, the development, and the life of every single organic individual, we meet with exactly the same phenomena of progress and differentiation. The individual development, or the ontogenesis of every single organism, from the egg to the complete form is nothing but a growth attended by a series of diverging and progressive changes. This applies equally to animals, plants, and protista. If, for example, we consider the ontogeny of any mammal, of man, of an ape, or of a pouched animal, or if we follow the individual development of any other vertebrate animal of another class, we everywhere find essentially the same phenomena. Every one of these animals develops itself originally out of a single cell, the egg. This cell increases by self-division, and forms a number of cells, and by the growth of this accumulation of cells, by the divergent development of originally identical293 cells, by the division of labour among them, and by their perfecting, there arises the perfect organism, the complicated composition of which excites our admiration.

It seems to me here indispensable to draw attention more closely to those infinitely important and interesting processes which accompany ontogenesis, or the individual development of organisms, and especially to that of vertebrate animals, man included. I wish especially to recommend these exceedingly remarkable and instructive phenomena to the reader’s most careful consideration, first, because they are among the strongest supports of the Theory of Descent, and secondly, because, considering their immense general importance, they have hitherto been properly considered only by a few privileged persons.

We cannot indeed but be astonished when we consider the deep ignorance which still prevails, in the widest circles, about the facts of the individual development of man and organisms in general. These facts, the universal importance of which cannot be estimated too highly, were established, in their most important outlines, even more than a hundred years ago, in 1759, by the great German naturalist Caspar Friedriech Wolff, in his classical “Theoria Generationis.” But, just as Lamarck’s Theory of Descent, founded in 1809, lay dormant for half a century, and was only awakened to new and imperishable life in 1859, by Darwin, in like manner Wolff’s Theory of Epigenesis remained unknown for nearly half a century; and it was only after Oken, in 1806 had published his history of the development of the intestinal tube, and after Meckel, in 1812, had translated Wolff’s work (written in Latin) on the same subject into German, that Wolff’s theory of epigenesis became more generally 294 known, and formed the foundation of all subsequent investigations of the history of individual development. The study of ontogenesis now received a great stimulus, and soon there appeared the classical investigations of the two friends, Christian Pander (1817) and Carl Ernst Bär (1819). Bär, in his remarkable “Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere,”(20) worked out the ontogeny of vertebrate animals in all its important facts. He carried out a series of such excellent observations, and illustrated them by such profound philosophical reflections, that his work became the foundation for a thorough understanding of this important group of animals, to which, of course, man also belongs. The facts of embryology alone would be sufficient to solve the question of man’s position in nature, which is the highest of all problems. Look attentively at and compare the eight figures which are represented on the adjoining Plates II. and III., and it will be seen that the philosophical importance of embryology cannot be too highly estimated.

We may well ask, What do our so-called “educated” circles, who think so much of the high civilization of the 19th century, know of these most important biological facts, of these indispensable foundations for understanding their own organism? How much do our speculative philosophers and theologians know about them, who fancy they can arrive at an understanding of the human organism by mere guesswork or divine inspiration? What indeed do the majority of naturalists, not excepting the majority of the so-called “zoologists” (including the entomologists!), know about them?

The answer to this question tells much to the shame of the persons above indicated, and we must confess, willingly295 or unwillingly, that these invaluable facts of human ontogeny are, even at the present day, utterly unknown to most people, or are in no way valued as they deserve to be. It is in the face of such a condition of things as this that we see clearly upon what a wrong and one-sided road the much vaunted culture of the 19th century still moves. Ignorance and superstition are the foundations upon which most men construct their conception of their own organism and its relation to the totality of things; and these palpable facts of the history of development, which might throw the light of truth upon them, are ignored. It is true these facts are not calculated to excite approval among those who assume a thorough difference between man and the rest of nature, and who will not acknowledge the animal origin of the human race. That origin must be a very unpleasant truth to members of the ruling and privileged castes in those nations among which there exists an hereditary division of social classes, in consequence of false ideas about the laws of inheritance. It is well known that, even in our day, in many civilized countries the idea of hereditary grades of rank goes so far, that, for example, the aristocracy imagine themselves to be of a nature totally different from that of ordinary citizens, and nobles who commit a disgraceful offence are punished by being expelled from the caste of nobles, and thrust down among the pariahs of “vulgar citizens.” What are these nobles to think of the noble blood which flows in their privileged veins, when they learn that all human embryos, those of nobles as well as commoners, during the first two months of development, are scarcely distinguishable from the tailed embryos of dogs and other mammals?296

As the object of these pages is solely to further the general knowledge of natural truths, and to spread, in wider circles, a natural conception of the relations of man to the rest of nature, I shall be justified if I do not pay any regard to the widely-spread prejudice in favour of an exceptional and privileged position for man in creation, and simply give here the embryological facts from which the reader will be able to draw conclusions affirming the groundlessness of those prejudices. I wish all the more to entreat him to reflect carefully upon these facts of ontogeny, as it is my firm conviction that a general knowledge of them can only promote the intellectual advance, and thereby the mental perfecting, of the human race.

Amidst all the infinitely rich and interesting material which lies before us in the ontogeny of vertebrate animals, that is, in the history of their individual development, I shall here confine myself to showing some of those facts which are of the greatest importance to the Theory of Descent in general, as well as in its special application to man. Man is at the beginning of his individual existence a simple egg, a single little cell, just the same as every animal organism which originates by sexual generation. The human egg is essentially the same as that of all other mammals, and cannot be distinguished from the egg of the higher mammals. The egg represented in Fig. 5 might be that of a man or an ape as well as of a dog, a horse, or any other mammal. Not only the form and structure, but even the size of the egg in most mammals is the same as in man, namely, about the 120th part of an inch in diameter, so that the egg under favorable circumstances, with the naked eye, can just be perceived as a small speck. The differences which really297 exist between the eggs of different mammals and that of man do not consist in the form, but in the chemical mixture, in the molecular composition of the albuminous combination of carbon, of which the egg essentially consists. These minute individual differences of all eggs, which depend upon indirect or potential adaptation (and especially upon the law of individual adaptation), are indeed not directly perceptible to the exceedingly imperfect senses of man, but are cognisable through indirect means, as the primary causes of the difference of all individuals.

The human egg a hundred times enlarged.
Fig. 5.—The human egg a hundred times enlarged. a. The kernel speck, or nucleolus (the so-called germinal spot of the egg). b. Kernel, or nucleus (the so-called germinal vesicle of the egg). c. Cell-substance, or protoplasm (so-called yolk of the egg). d. Cell-membrane (the yolk-membrane of the egg; in mammals, on account of its transparency, called zona pellucida). The eggs of other mammals are of the same form.
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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

Postby admin » Sat Mar 03, 2018 9:17 am

Part 2 of 2

The human egg is, like that of all other mammals, a small globular bladder, which contains all the constituent parts of a simple organic cell (Fig. 5). The most essential parts of it are the mucous cell-substance, or the protoplasma (c), which in an egg is called the “yolk,” and the cell-kernel, or nucleus (b), surrounded by it, which is here called by the special name of the “germinal vesicle.” The latter is a delicate, clear, glassy globule of albumen, of about 1-600th part of an inch in diameter, and surrounds, a still smaller, sharply-marked, rounded granule (a), the kernel-speck, or the nucleolus of the cell (in the egg it is called the “germinal spot”). The outside of the globular egg-cell of a mammal is surrounded by a thick pellucid membrane, the cell-membrane298 or yolk-membrane, which here bears the special name of zona pellucida (d). The eggs of many lower animals (for example of many Medusæ) differ from this in being naked cells, as the outer covering, or cell-membrane, is wanting.

As soon as the egg (ovulum) of the mammal has attained its full maturity, it leaves the ovary of the female, in which it originates, and passes into the oviduct, and through this narrow passage into the wider pouch or womb (uterus). If, meanwhile, the egg is fructified by the male seed (sperm), it develops itself in this pouch into an embryo, and does not leave it until perfectly developed and capable of coming into the world at birth as a young mammal.

The variations of form and transformations which the fructified egg must go through within the uterus before it assumes the form of the mammal are exceedingly remarkable, and proceed from the beginning in man, in precisely the same way as in the other mammals. At first the fructified egg of the mammal acts as a single-celled organism, which is about to propagate independently and increase itself; for example, an Amœba (compare Fig. 2, p. 188). In point of fact the simple egg-cell becomes two, by the process of cell-division which I have previously described. There arise from the single germinal spot (the small kernel-speck of the original simple egg-cell) two new kernel-specks, and then in like manner, out of the germinal vesicle (the nucleus), two new cell-kernels. Then, and not until then, does the globular protoplasma first separate itself by an equatorial furrow into two halves, in such a manner that each half encloses one of the two kernels, together with its kernel-speck. Thus the simple egg-cell, within the299 original cellular membrane, has become two naked cells, each possessing its own kernel (Fig. 6).

First commencement of the development of a mammal’s egg
Fig. 6.—First commencement of the development of a mammal’s egg, the so-called “yolk-cleavage” (propagation of the egg-cell by repeated self-division). A. The egg, by the formation of the first furrow, falls into two cells. B. These by division fall into four cells. C. These latter have fallen into eight cells. D. By continued division a globular mass of numerous cells has arisen.

The same process of cell-division now repeats itself several times in succession. In this way, from two cells (Fig. 6 A) there arise four (Fig. 6 B); from four, eight (Fig. 6 C); from eight, sixteen; from these, thirty-two, etc. Each time the division of the kernel-speck precedes that of the kernel; this, again, precedes that of the cell-substance, or protoplasma. As the division of the latter always commences with the formation of a superficial annular furrow, or cleft, the whole process is usually called the furrowing of the egg, or yolk-cleavage, and the products of it, that is, the cells arising from the continued halving, are called the cleavage spheres. However, the whole process is nothing more than a simple, oft-repeated division of cells, and the products of it are actual, naked cells. Finally, through the continued division or “furrowing” of the mammal’s egg there arises a mulberry-shaped ball, which is composed of a300 great number of small spheres, naked cells, containing kernels (Fig. 6 D). These cells are the materials out of which the body of the young mammal is constructed. Every one of us has once been such a simple mulberry-shaped ball, composed only of small equi-formal cells.

The further development of the globular lump of cells, which now represents the young body of the mammal, consists first in its changing into a globular bladder, as fluid accumulates within it. This bladder is called the germ-bladder (vesicula blastodermica). Its wall is at first composed of merely equi-formal cells. But soon, at one point on the wall, arises a disc-shaped thickening, as the cells here increase rapidly, and this thickening is now the foundation of the actual body of the germ or embryo, while the other parts of the germ-bladder serve only for its nutrition. The thickened disc, or foundation of the embryo, soon assumes an oblong, and then a fiddle-shaped form, in consequence of its right and left walls becoming convex (Fig. 7, p. 304). At this stage of development in the first form of their germ or embryo, not only all mammals, including man, but even all vertebrate animals in general—birds, reptiles, amphibious animals, and fishes—can either not be distinguished from one another at all, or only by very unessential differences, such as the arrangement of the egg-coverings. In all the whole body consists of nothing but a quite simple, oblong, oval, or violin-shaped thin disc, which is composed of three closely connected membranes or plates, lying one above another. Each of the three plates or layers of the germ consists simply of cells all exactly like one another; but each layer has a different function in the building up of the vertebrate animal body. Out of the upper or outer germ-layer 301 arises solely the outer skin (epidermis), together with the central parts of the nervous system (spinal marrow and brain); out of the lower or inner layer arises only the inner delicate skin (epithelium) which lines the whole intestinal tube from the mouth to the anus, together with all the glands connected with it (lung, liver, salivary glands, etc.); out of the middle germ-layer lying between the two others arise all the other organs, muscles, bones, blood-vessels. Now, the processes by which the various and exceedingly complicated parts of the fully-formed body of vertebrate animals arise out of such simple material—out of the three germ-layers composed only of cells—are, in the first place, the repeated division, and consequently the increase of cells; in the second place, the division of labour or differentiation of these cells; and thirdly, the union of the variously developed or differentiated cells, for the formation of the different organs. Thus arises the gradual progress or perfecting which can be traced step by step in the development of the embryonic body. The simple embryonic cells, which are to constitute the body of the vertebrate animal, stand in the same relation to each other as citizens who wish to found a state. Some take to one occupation, others to another, and work together for the good of the whole. By this division of labour, or differentiation, and the perfecting (the organic progress) which is connected with it, it becomes possible for the whole state to accomplish undertakings which would have been impossible to the single individual. The whole body of the vertebrate animal, like every other many-celled organism, is a republican state of cells, and consequently it can accomplish organic functions which the individual cell, as a solitary individual302 (for example, an Amœba, or a single-celled plant), could never perform.

No sensible person supposes that carefully devised institutions, which have been established for the good of the whole, as well as for the individual, in every human state, are the results of the action of a personal and supernatural Creator, acting for a definite purpose. On the contrary, every one knows that these useful institutions of organization in the state are the consequences of the co-operation of the individual citizens and their common government, as well as of adaptation to the conditions of existence of the outer world. Just in the same way we must judge of the many-celled organism. In it also all the useful arrangements are solely the natural and necessary result of the co-operation, differentiation, and perfecting of the individual citizens—the cells—and by no means the artificial arrangements of a Creator acting for a definite purpose. If we rightly consider this comparison, and pursue it further, we can distinctly see the perversity of that dualistic conception of nature which discovers the action of a creative plan of construction in the various adaptations of the organization of living things.

Let us pursue the individual development of the vertebrate animal body a few stages further, and see what is next done by the citizens of this embryonic organism. In the central line of the violin-shaped disc, which is composed of the three cellular germ-layers, there arises a straight delicate furrow, the so-called “primitive streak,” by which the violin-shaped body is divided into two equal lateral halves—a right and a left part or “antimer.” On both sides of that streak or furrow, the upper or external germ-layer rises in 303 the form of a longitudinal fold, and both folds then grow together over the furrow in the central line, and thus form a cylindrical tube. This tube is called the marrow-tube, or medullary canal, because it is the foundation of the central nervous system, the spinal marrow (medulla spinalis). At first it is pointed both in front and behind, and it remains so for life in the lowest vertebrate animal, the brainless, skull-less Lancelet (Amphioxus). But in all other vertebrate animals, which we distinguish from the latter as skulled animals, or Craniota, a difference between the fore and hinder end of the marrow tube soon becomes visible, the fore end becoming dilated, and changing into a roundish bladder, the foundation of the brain.

In all Craniota, that is, in all vertebrate animals possessing skull and brain, the brain, which is at first only the bladder-shaped dilatation of the anterior end of the spinal marrow, divides into five bladders lying one behind the other, four superficial, transverse in-nippings being formed. These five brain-bladders, out of which afterwards arise all the different parts of the intricately constructed brain, can be seen in their original condition in the embryo represented in Fig. 7. It is just the same whether we examine the embryo of a dog, a fowl, a lizard, or any other higher vertebrate animal. For the embryos of the different skulled animals (at least the three higher classes of them, the reptiles, birds and mammals) cannot be in any way distinguished at the stage represented in Fig. 7. The whole form of the body is as yet exceedingly simple, being merely a thin, leaf-like disc. Face, legs, intestines, etc., are as yet completely wanting. But the five bladders are already quite distinct from one another.304

Embryo of a mammal or bird.Fig. 7.—Embryo of a mammal or bird, in which the five brain-bladders have just commenced to develop. v. Fore brain. z. Twixt brain. m. Mid brain. h. Hind brain. n. After brain. p. Spinal-marrow. a. Eye-bladders. w. Primitive vertebræ. d. Spinal-axis or notochord.

The first bladder, the fore brain (a), is in so far the most important that it principally forms the hemispheres of the so-called larger brain (cerebrum), that part which is the seat of the higher mental activities. The more these activities are developed in the series of vertebrate animals, the more do the two lateral halves of the fore brain, or the hemispheres, grow at the expense of the other bladders, and overlap them in front and from above. In man, where they are most strongly developed, agreeing with his higher mental activity, they eventually almost entirely cover the other parts from above (compare Plates II. and III.) The second bladder, the twixt brain (z), forms that portion of the brain which is called the centre of sight, and stands in the closest relation to the eyes (a), which grow right and left out of the fore brain in the shape of two bladders, and later lie at the bottom of the twixt brain. The third bladder, the mid brain (m), for the most part vanishes in the formation of the so-called four bulbs, a bossy portion of the brain, which is strongly developed in reptiles and birds (Fig. E, F, Plate II.), whereas in mammals it recedes305 much more (Fig. G, H, Plate III.). The fourth bladder, the hind brain (h), forms the so-called little hemispheres, together with the middle part of the small brain (cerebellum), a part of the brain as to the function of which the most contradictory conjectures are entertained, but which seems principally to regulate the co-ordination of movements. Lastly, the fifth bladder, the after brain (n), develops into that very important part of the central nervous system which is called the prolonged marrow (medulla oblongata). It is the central organ of the respiratory movements, and of other important functions, and an injury to it immediately causes death, whereas the large hemispheres of the fore brain (or the organ of the “soul,” in a restricted sense) can be removed bit by bit, and even completely destroyed, without causing the death of the vertebrate animal—only its higher mental activities disappearing in consequence.

These five brain bladders, in all vertebrate animals which possess a brain at all, are originally arranged in the same manner and develop gradually in the different groups so differently, that it is afterwards very difficult to recognize the corresponding parts in the fully-developed brains. In the early stage of development which is represented in Fig. 7, it seems as yet quite impossible to distinguish the embryos of the different mammals, birds, and reptiles, from one another. But if we compare the much more developed embryos on Plates II. and III. with one another, we can clearly see an inequality in their development, and especially it will be perceived that the brain of the two mammals (G and H) already strongly differ from that of birds (F) and of reptiles (E). In the two latter the mid brain predominates, but in the former the fore brain. Even at this stage the306 brain of the bird (F) is scarcely distinguishable from that of the tortoise (E), and in like manner the brain of the dog (G) is as yet almost the same as that of man (H). If, on the other hand, we compare the brains of these four vertebrate animals in a fully developed condition, we find them so very different in all anatomical particulars, that we cannot doubt for a moment as to which animal each brain belongs.

I have here explained the original equality, the gradual commencement, and the ever increasing separation or differentiation of the embryos in the different vertebrate animals, taking the brain as a special example, just because this organ of the soul’s activity is of special interest. But I might as well have discussed in its stead the heart, or the liver, or the limbs, in short, any other part of the body, since the same wonder of creation is here ever repeated, namely, this, that all parts are originally the same in the different vertebrate animals, and that the variations by which the different classes, orders, families, genera, etc., differ and deviate from one another, are only gradually developed.

There are certainly few parts of the body which are so differently constructed as the limbs or extremities of the vertebrate animals. Now, I wish the reader to compare in Fig. A-H on Plates II. and III., the four extremities (bv) of the embryos with one another, and he will scarcely be able to perceive any important differences between the human arm (H bv), the wing of a bird (F bv), the slim foreleg of a dog (G bv), and the plump foreleg of the tortoise (E bv). In comparing the hinder extremities (bh) in these figures he will find it equally difficult to distinguish the leg of a man (H bh), of a bird (F bh), the hind-leg of a dog (G bh), and that of a tortoise (E bh). The fore as well as the hinder 307extremities are as yet short, broad lumps, at the ends of which the foundations of the five toes are placed, connected as yet by a membrane. At a still earlier stage (Fig. A-D) the five toes are not marked out at all, and it is quite impossible to distinguish even the fore and hinder extremities from one another. The latter, as well as the former, are nothing but simple roundish processes, which have grown out of the side of the trunk. At the very early stage represented in Fig. 7 they are completely wanting, and the whole embryo is a simple trunk without a trace of limbs.

Germs or Embryos of four Vertebrates.
Pl. II.
Parts of brain
v. Fore-brain. z. Twixt-brain. m. Mid-brain. h. Hind-brain. n. After-brain. w. Spine. r. Spinal-cord.

Pl. III.
Nose, Eyes, Ear, Fore-leg, Hind-leg.
na. Nose. a. Eyes. o. Ear. k1 k2 k3. Gill-arches. s. Tail. bv. Fore-leg. bh. Hind-leg.

I wish especially to draw attention in Plates II. and III., which represents embryos in early stages of development (Fig. A-D)—and in which we are not able to recognize a trace of the full-grown animal—to an exceedingly important formation, which originally is common to all vertebrate animals, but which at a later period is transformed into the most different organs. Every one surely knows the gill-arches of fish, those arched bones which lie behind one another, to the number of three or four, on each side of the neck, and which support the gills, the respiratory organs of the fish (double rows of red leaves, which are popularly called “fishes’ ears.”) Now, these gill-arches originally exist exactly the same in man (D), in dogs (C), in fowls (B), and in tortoises (A), as well as in all other vertebrate animals. (In Fig. A-D the three gill-arches of the right side of the neck are marked k1 k2 k3). Now, it is only in fishes that these remain in their original form, and develop into respiratory organs. In the other vertebrate animals they are partly employed in the formation of the face (especially the jaw apparatus), and partly in the formation of the organ of hearing.308

Finally, when comparing the embryos on Plates II. and III., we must not fail to give attention again to the human tail (s), an organ which, in the original condition, man shares with all other vertebrate animals. The discovery of tailed men was long anxiously expected by many monistic philosophers, in order to establish a closer relationship between man and the other mammals. And in like manner their dualistic opponents often maintained with pride that the complete want of a tail formed one of the most important bodily distinctions between men and animals, though they did not bear in mind the many tailless animals which really exist. Now, man in the first months of development possesses a real tail as well as his nearest kindred, the tailless apes (orang-outang, chimpanzee, gorilla), and vertebrate animals in general. But whereas, in most of them—for example, the dog (C, G)—in the course of development it always grows longer, in man (Fig. D, H) and in tailless mammals, at a certain period of development, it degenerates and finally completely disappears. However, even in fully developed men, the remnant of the tail is seen in the three, four, or five tail vertebræ (vertebræ coccygeæ) as an aborted or rudimentary organ, which forms the hinder or lower end of the vertebral column (p. 289).

Most persons even now refuse to acknowledge the most important deduction of the Theory of Descent, that is, the palæontological development of man from ape-like, and through them from still lower, mammals, and consider such a transformation of organic form as impossible. But, I ask, are the phenomena of the individual development of man, the fundamental features of which I have here given, in any way less wonderful? Is it not in the highest309 degree remarkable that all vertebrate animals of the most different classes—fishes, amphibious animals, reptiles, birds, and mammals—in the first periods of their embryonic development cannot be distinguished at all, and even much later, at a time when reptiles and birds are already distinctly different from mammals, that the dog and the man are almost identical? Verily, if we compare those two series of development with one another, and ask ourselves which of the two is the more wonderful, it must be confessed that ontogeny, or the short and quick history of development of the individual, is much more mysterious than phylogeny, or the long and slow history of development of the tribe. For one and the same grand change of form is accomplished by the latter in the course of many thousands of years, and by the former in the course of a few months. Evidently this most rapid and astonishing transformation of the individual in ontogenesis, which we can actually point out at any moment by direct observation, is in itself much more wonderful and astonishing than the corresponding, but much slower and gradual transformation which the long chain of ancestors of the same individual has gone through in phylogenesis.

The two series of organic development, the ontogenesis of the individual and the phylogenesis of the tribe to which it belongs, stand in the closest causal connection with each other. I have endeavoured, in the second volume of the “General Morphology,”(4) to establish this theory in detail, as I consider it exceedingly important. As I have there shown, ontogenesis, or the development of the individual, is a short and quick repetition (recapitulation) of phylogenesis, or the development of the tribe to which it belongs, determined310 by the laws of inheritance and adaptation; by tribe I mean the ancestors which form the chain of progenitors of the individual concerned. (Gen. Morph. ii. 110-147, 371.)

In this intimate connection of ontogeny and phylogeny, I see one of the most important and irrefutable proofs of the Theory of Descent. No one can explain these phenomena unless he has recourse to the laws of Inheritance and Adaptation; by these alone are they explicable. These laws, which we have previously explained, are the laws of abbreviated, of homochronic, and of homotopic inheritance, and here deserve renewed consideration. As so high and complicated an organism as that of man, or the organism of every other mammal, rises upwards from a simple cellular state, and as it progresses in its differentiation and perfecting it passes through the same series of transformations which its animal progenitors have passed through, during immense spaces of time, inconceivable ages ago. I have already pointed out this extremely important parallelism of the development of individuals and tribes (p. 10). Certain very early and low stages in the development of man, and the other vertebrate animals in general, correspond completely in many points of structure with conditions which last for life in the lower fishes. The next phase which follows upon this presents us with a change of the fish-like being into a kind of amphibious animal. At a later period the mammal, with its special characteristics, develops out of the amphibian, and we can clearly see, in the successive stages of its later development, a series of steps of progressive transformation which evidently correspond with the differences of different mammalian orders and families. Now, it is precisely in the same succession that we also see311 the ancestors of man, and of the higher mammals, appear one after the other in the earth’s history; first fishes, then amphibians, later the lower, and at last the higher mammals. Here, therefore, the embryonic development of the individual is completely parallel to the palæontological development of the whole tribe to which it belongs, and this exceedingly interesting and important phenomenon can be explained only by the interaction of the laws of Inheritance and Adaptation.

The example last mentioned, of the parallelism of the palæontological and of the individual developmental series, now directs our attention to a third developmental series, which stands in the closest relations to these two, and which likewise runs, on the whole, parallel to them. I mean that series of development of forms which constitutes the object of investigation in comparative anatomy, and which I will briefly call the systematic developmental series of species. By this we understand the chain of the different, but related and connected forms, which exist side by side at any one period of the earth’s history; as for example, at the present moment. While comparative anatomy compares the different forms of fully-developed organisms with one another, it endeavours to discover the common prototypes which underlie, as it were, the manifold forms of kindred genera, classes, etc., and which are more or less concealed by their particular differentiation. It endeavours to make out the series of progressive steps which are indicated in the different degrees of perfection of the divergent branches of the tribe. To make use again of the same particular instance, comparative anatomy shows us how the individual organs and systems of organs in the tribe of vertebrate312 animals—in the different classes, families, and species of it—have unequally developed, differentiated, and perfected themselves. It shows us how far the succession of classes of vertebrate animals, from the Fishes upwards, through the Amphibia to the Mammals, and here again, from the lower to the higher orders of Mammals, forms a progressive series or ladder. This attempt to establish a connected anatomical developmental series we may discover in the works of the great comparative anatomists of all ages—in the works of Goethe, Meckel, Cuvier, Johannes Müller, Gegenbaur, and Huxley.

The developmental series of mature forms, which comparative anatomy points out in the different diverging and ascending steps of the organic system, and which we call the systematic developmental series, is parallel to the palæontological developmental series, because it deals with the result of palæontological development, and it is parallel to the individual developmental series, because this is parallel to the palæontological series. If two parallels are parallel to a third, they must be parallel to one another.

The varied differentiation, and the unequal degree of perfecting which comparative anatomy points out in the developmental series of the System, is chiefly determined by the ever increasing variety of conditions of existence to which the different groups adapt themselves in the struggle for life, and by the different degrees of rapidity and completeness with which this adaptation has been effected. Conservative groups which have retained their inherited peculiarities most tenaciously remain, in consequence, at the lowest and rudest stage of development. Those groups progressing most rapidly and variously, and which have adapted313 themselves to changed conditions of existence most readily have attained the highest degree of perfection. The further the organic world developed in the course of the earth’s history, the greater must the gap between the lower conservative and the higher progressive groups have become, as in fact may be seen too in the history of nations. In this way also is explained the historical fact, that the most perfect animal and vegetable groups have developed themselves in a comparatively short time to a considerable height, while the lowest or most conservative groups have remained stationary throughout all ages in their original simple stage, or have progressed, but very slowly and gradually. The series of man’s progenitors clearly shows this state of things. The sharks of the present day are still very like the primary fish, which are among the most ancient vertebrate progenitors of man, and the lowest amphibians of the present day (the gilled salamanders and salamanders) are very like the amphibians which first developed themselves out of fishes. So, too, the later ancestors of man, the Monotremata and Marsupials, the most ancient mammals, are at the same time the most imperfect animals of the class which still exist.

The laws of inheritance and adaptation known to us are completely sufficient to explain this exceedingly important and interesting phenomenon, which may be briefly designated as the parallelism of individual, of palæontological, and of systematic development. No opponent of the Theory of Descent has been able to give an explanation of this extremely wonderful fact, whereas it is perfectly explained, according to the Theory of Descent, by the laws of Inheritance and Adaptation.314

If we examine this parallelism of the three organic series of development more accurately, we have to add the following special qualifications. Ontogeny, or the history of the individual development of every organism (embryology and metamorphology), presents us with a simple unbranching or graduated chain of forms; and so it is with that portion of phylogeny which comprises the palæontological history of development of the direct ancestors only of an individual organism. But the whole of phylogeny—which meets us in the natural system of every organic tribe or phylum, and which is concerned with the investigation of the palæontological development of all the branches of this tribe—forms a branching or tree-shaped developmental series, a veritable pedigree. If we examine and compare the branches of this pedigree, and place them together according to the degree of their differentiation and perfection, we obtain the tree-shaped, branching, systematic developmental series of comparative anatomy. Strictly speaking, therefore, the latter is parallel to the whole of phylogeny, and consequently is only partially parallel to ontogeny; for ontogeny itself is parallel only to a portion of phylogeny.

All the phenomena of organic development above discussed, especially the threefold genealogical parallelism, and the laws of differentiation and progress, which are evident in each of these three series of organic development, and, further, the whole history of rudimentary organs, are exceedingly important proofs of the truth of the Theory of Descent. For by it alone can they be explained, whereas its opponents cannot even offer a shadow of an explanation of them. Without the Doctrine of Filiation, the fact of315 organic development in general cannot be understood. We should therefore, for this reason alone, be forced to accept Lamarck’s Theory of Descent, even if we did not possess Darwin’s Theory of Selection.
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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

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Chorological Facts and Causes.—Origin of most Species in one Single Locality: “Centres of Creation.”—Distribution by Migration.—Active and Passive Migrations of Animals and Plants.—Means of Transport.—Transport of Germs by Water and by Wind.—Continual Change of the Area of Distribution by Elevations and Depressions of the Ground.—Chorological Importance of Geological Processes.—Influence of the Change of Climate.—Ice or Glacial Period.—Its Importance to Chorology.—Importance of Migrations for the Origin of New Species.—Isolation of Colonists.—Wagner’s Law of Migration.—Connection between the Theory of Migration and the Theory of Selection.—Agreement of its Results with the Theory of Descent.

As I have repeatedly said, but cannot too much emphasize, the actual value and invincible strength of the Theory of Descent does not lie in its explaining this or that single phenomenon, but in the fact that it explains all biological phenomena, that it makes all botanical and zoological series of phenomena intelligible in their relations to one another. Hence every thoughtful investigator is the more firmly and deeply convinced of its truth the more he advances from single biological observations to a general view of the whole domain of animal and vegetable life. Let us now, starting from this comprehensive point of view, survey a biological domain, the varied and complicated351 phenomena of which may be explained with remarkable simplicity and clearness by the theory of selection. I mean Chorology, or the theory of the local distribution of organisms over the surface of the earth. By this I do not only mean the geographical distribution of animal and vegetable species over the different parts and provinces of the earth, over continents and islands, seas, and rivers; but also their topographical distribution in a vertical direction, their ascending to the heights of mountains, and their descending into the depths of the ocean. (Gen. Morph. ii. 286.)

The strange chorological series of phenomena which show the horizontal distribution of organisms over parts of the earth, and their vertical distribution in heights and depths, have long since excited general interest. In recent times Alexander Humboldt(39) and Frederick Schouw have especially discussed the geography of plants, and Berghaus and Schmarda the geography of animals, on a large scale. But although these and several other naturalists have in many ways increased our knowledge of the distribution of animal and vegetable forms, and laid open to us a new domain of science, full of wonderful and interesting phenomena, yet Chorology as a whole remained, as far as their labours were concerned, only a desultory knowledge of a mass of individual facts. It could not be called a science as long as the causes for the explanation of these facts were wanting. These causes were first disclosed by the theory of selection and its doctrine of the migrations of animal and vegetable species, and it is only since the works of Darwin and Wallace that we have been able to speak of an independent science of Chorology.352

If all the phenomena of the geographical and topographical distribution of organisms are examined by themselves, without considering the gradual development of species, and if at the same time, following the customary superstition, the individual species of animals and plants are considered as forms independently created and independent of one another, then there remains nothing for us to do but to gaze at those phenomena as a confused collection of incomprehensible and inexplicable miracles. But as soon as we leave this low stand-point, and rise to the height of the theory of development, by means of the supposition of a blood-relationship between the different species, then all at once a clear light falls upon this strange series of miracles, and we see that all chorological facts can be understood quite simply and clearly by the supposition of a common descent of the species, and their passive and active migrations.

The most important principle from which we must start in chorology, and of the truth of which we are convinced by due examination of the theory of selection, is that, as a rule, every animal and vegetable species has arisen only once in the course of time and only in one place on the earth—its so-called “centre of creation”—by natural selection. I share this opinion of Darwin’s unconditionally, in respect to the great majority of higher and perfect organisms, and in respect to most animals and plants in which the division of labour, or differentiation of the cells and organs of which they are composed, has attained a certain stage. For it is quite incredible, or could at best only be an exceedingly rare accident, that all the manifold and complicated circumstances—all the different conditions of the struggle for life,353 which influence the origin of a new species by natural selection—should have worked together in exactly the same agreement and combination more than once in the earth’s history, or should have been active at the same time at several different points of the earth’s surface.

On the other hand, I consider it to be very probable that certain exceedingly imperfect organisms of the simplest structure, forms of species of an exceedingly indifferent nature, as, for example, many single-celled Protista, but especially the Monera, the simplest of them all, should have several times or simultaneously arisen in their specific form in several parts of the earth. For the few and very simple conditions by which their specific form was changed in the struggle for life may surely have often been repeated, in the course of time, independently in different parts of the earth. Further, those higher specific forms also, which have not arisen by natural selection, but by hybridism (the previously-mentioned hybrid species, pp. 147 and 275), may have repeatedly arisen anew in different localities. As, however, this proportionately small number of organisms does not especially interest us here, we may, in respect of chorology, leave them alone, and need only take into consideration the distribution of the great majority of animal and vegetable species in regard to which the single origin of every species in a single locality, in its so-called “central point of creation,” can be considered as tolerably certain.

Every animal and vegetable species from the beginning of its existence has possessed the tendency to spread beyond the limited locality of its origin, beyond the boundary of its “centre of creation,” or, in other words, beyond its354 primæval home, or its natal place. This is a necessary consequence of the relations of population and over-population (pp. 161 and 256). The more an animal or vegetable species increases, the less is its limited natal place sufficient for its sustenance, and the fiercer the struggle for life; the more rapid the over-population of the natal spot, the more it leads to emigration. These migrations are common to all organisms, and are the real cause of the wide distribution of the different species of organisms over the earth’s surface. Just as men leave over-crowded states, so all animals and plants migrate from their over-crowded primæval homes.

Many distinguished naturalists, especially Lyell(11) and Schleiden, have before this repeatedly drawn attention to the great importance of these very interesting migrations of organisms. The means of transport by which they are effected are extremely varied. Darwin has discussed these most excellently in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of his work, which are exclusively devoted to “geographical distribution.” The means of transport are partly active, partly passive; that is to say, the organism effects its migration partly by free locomotion due to its own activity, and partly by the movements of other natural bodies in which it has no active share.

It is self-evident that active migrations play the chief part in animals able to move freely. The more freely an animal’s organization permits it to all move in directions, the more easily the animal species can migrate, and the more rapidly it will spread over the earth. Flying animals are of course most favoured in this respect, among vertebrate animals especially birds, and among articulated animals, insects. These two classes, as soon as they came into existence, can355 have more easily spread over the whole earth than any other animal, and this fact partly explains the extraordinary uniformity of structure which characterizes these two great classes of animals. For, although they contain an exceedingly large number of different species, and although the insect class alone is said to possess more different species than all other classes of animals together, yet all the innumerable species of insects, and in like manner, also, the different species of birds, agree most strikingly in all essential peculiarities of their organization. Hence, in the class of insects, as well as in that of birds, we can distinguish only a very small number of large natural groups or orders, and these few orders differ but very little from one another in their internal structure. The orders of birds with their numerous species are not nearly as distinct from one another as the orders of the mammalian class, containing much fewer species; and the orders of insects, which are extremely rich in genera and species, resemble one another much more closely in their internal structure than do the much smaller orders of the crab class. The general parallelism between birds and insects is also very interesting in relation to systematic zoology; and the great importance of their richness in forms, for scientific morphology, lies in the fact that they show us how, within the narrowest anatomical sphere, and without profound changes of the essential internal organization, the greatest variety in external bodily forms can be attained. The reason of this is evidently their flying mode of life and their free locomotion. In consequence of this birds, as well as insects, have spread very rapidly over the whole surface of the earth, have settled in all possible localities inaccessible to other animals, and variously modified356 their specific form by superficial adaptation to particular local relations.

Next to the flying animals, those animals, of course, have spread most quickly and furthest which were next best able to migrate, that is, the best runners among the inhabitants of the land, and the best swimmers among the inhabitants of the water. However, the power of such active migrations is not confined to those animals which throughout life enjoy free locomotion. For the fixed animals also, such as corals, tubicolous worms, sea-squirts, lily encrinites, sea-acorns, barnacles, and many other lower animals which adhere to seaweeds, stones, etc., enjoy, at least at an early period of life, free locomotion. They all migrate before they adhere to anything. Their first free locomotive condition of early life is generally that of a “ciliated” larva, a roundish, cellular corpuscle, which, by means of a garb of movable “flimmer-hairs,” (Latin, “cilia”) swarms about in the water and bears the name of Planula.

But the power of free locomotion, and hence, also, of active migration, is not confined to animals alone, but many plants likewise enjoy it. Many lower aquatic plants, especially the class of the Tangles (Algæ), swim about freely in the water in early life, like the lower animals just mentioned, by means of a vibratile hairy coat, a vibrating whip, or a covering of tremulous fringes, and only at a later period adhere to objects. Even in the case of many higher plants, which we designate as creepers and climbing plants, we may speak of active migration. Their elongated stalks and perennial roots creep or climb during their long process of growth to new positions, and by means of their widespread branches they acquire new habitations, to which357 they attach themselves by buds, and bring forth new colonies of individuals of their species.

Influential as these active migrations of most animals and many plants are, yet alone they would by no means be sufficient to explain the chorology of organisms. Passive migrations have ever been by far the more important, and of far greater influence, in the case of most plants and in that of many animals. Such passive changes of locality are produced by extremely numerous causes. Air and water in their eternal motion, wind and waves with their manifold currents, play the chief part. The wind in all places and at all times raises light organisms, small animals and plants, but especially their young germs, animal eggs and plant seeds, and carries them far over land and seas. Where they fall into the water they are seized by currents or waves and carried to other places. It is well known, from numerous examples, how far in many cases trunks of trees, hard shelled fruits, and other not readily perishable portions of plants are carried away from their original home by the course of rivers and by the currents of the sea. Trunks of palm trees from the West Indies are brought by the Gulf Stream to the British and Norwegian coasts. All large rivers bring down driftwood from the mountains, and frequently alpine plants are carried from their home at the source of the river into the plains, and even further, down to the sea. Frequently numerous inhabitants live between the roots of the plants thus carried down, and between the branches of the trees thus washed away there are various inhabitants which have to take part in the passive migration. The bark of the tree is covered with mosses, lichens, and parasitic insects. Other insects, spiders,358 etc., even small reptiles and mammals, are hidden within the hollow trunk or cling to the branches. In the earth adhering to the fibres of the roots, in the dust lying in the cracks of the bark, there are innumerable germs of smaller animals and plants. Now, if the trunk thus washed away lands safely on a foreign shore or on a distant island, the guests who had to take part in the involuntary voyage can leave their boat and settle in the new country. A very remarkable kind of water-transport is formed by the floating icebergs which annually become loosened from the eternal ice of the Polar Sea. Although these cold regions are thinly peopled, yet many of their inhabitants, who were accidentally upon an iceberg while it was becoming loosened, are carried away with it by the currents, and landed on warmer shores. In this manner, by means of loosened blocks of ice from the northern Polar Sea, often whole populations of small animals and plants have been carried to the northern shores of Europe and America. Nay, even polar foxes and polar bears have been carried in this way to Iceland and to the British Isles.

Transport by air is no less important than transport by water in this matter of passive migration. The dust covering our streets and roofs, the earth lying on dry fields and dried-up pools, the light moist soil of forests, in short, the whole surface of the globe contains millions of small organisms and their germs. Many of these small animals and plants can without injury become completely dried up, and awake again to life as soon as they are moistened. Every gust of wind raises up with the dust innumerable little creatures of this kind, and often carries them away to other places miles off. But even larger organisms, and especially359 their germs, may often make distant passive journeys through the air. The seeds of many plants are provided with light feathery processes, which act as parachutes and facilitate their flight in the air, and prevent their falling. Spiders make journeys of many miles through the air on their fine filaments, their so-called gossamer threads. Young frogs are frequently raised by whirlwinds into the air by thousands, and fall down in a distant part as a “shower of frogs.” Storms may carry birds and insects across half the earth’s circumference. They drop in the United States, having risen in England. Starting from California, they only come to rest in China. But, again, many other organisms may make the journey from one continent to another together with the birds and insects. Of course all parasites, the number of which is legion, fleas, lice, mites, moulds, etc., migrate with the organisms upon which they live. In the earth which often remains sticking to the claws of birds there are also small animals and plants or their germs. Thus the voluntary or involuntary migration of a single larger organism may carry a whole small flora and fauna from one part of the earth to another.

Besides the means of transport here mentioned, there are many others which explain the distribution of animal and vegetable species over the large tracts of the earth’s surface, and especially the general distribution of the so-called cosmopolitan species. But these alone would not nearly be sufficient to explain all chorological facts. How is it, for example, that many inhabitants of fresh water live in various rivers or lakes far away and quite apart from one another? How is it that many inhabitants of mountains, which cannot exist in plains, are found upon entirely360 separated and far distant chains of mountains? It is difficult to believe, and in many cases quite inconceivable, that these inhabitants of fresh water should have in any way, actively or passively, migrated over the land lying between the lakes, or that the inhabitants of mountains in any way, actively or passively, crossed the plains lying between their mountain homes. But here geology comes to our help, as a mighty ally, and completely solves these difficult problems for us.

The history of the earth’s development shows us that the distribution of land and water on its surface is ever and continually changing. In consequence of geological changes of the earth’s crust, elevations and depressions of the ground take place everywhere, sometimes more strongly marked in one place, sometimes in another. Even if they happen so slowly that in the course of centuries the seashore rises or sinks only a few inches, or even only a few lines, still they nevertheless effect great results in the course of long periods of time. And long—immeasurably long—periods of time have not been wanting in the earth’s history. During the course of many millions of years, ever since organic life existed on the earth, land and water have perpetually struggled for supremacy. Continents and islands have sunk into the sea, and new ones have arisen out of its bosom. Lakes and seas have slowly been raised and dried up, and new water basins have arisen by the sinking of the ground. Peninsulas have become islands by the narrow neck of land which connected them with the mainland sinking into the water. The islands of an archipelago have become the peaks of a continuous chain of mountains by the whole floor of their sea being considerably raised.361

Thus the Mediterranean at one time was an inland sea, when, in the place of the Straits of Gibraltar, an isthmus connected Africa with Spain. England, even during the more recent history of the earth, when man already existed, has repeatedly been connected with the European continent and been repeatedly separated from it. Nay, even Europe and North America have been directly connected. The South Sea at one time formed a large Pacific Continent, and the numerous little islands which now lie scattered in it were simply the highest peaks of the mountains covering that continent. The Indian Ocean formed a continent which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to the east coast of Africa. This large continent of former times Sclater, an Englishman, has called Lemuria, from the monkey-like animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great importance from being the probable cradle of the human race, which in all likelihood here first developed out of anthropoid apes. The important proof which Alfred Wallace has furnished,(36) by the help of chorological facts, that the present Malayan Archipelago consists in reality of two completely different divisions, is particularly interesting. The western division, the Indo-Malayan Archipelago, comprising the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, was formerly connected by Malacca with the Asiatic continent, and probably also with the Lemurian continent just mentioned. The eastern division, on the other hand, the Austro-Malayan Archipelago, comprising Celebes, the Moluccas, New Guinea, Solomon’s Islands, etc., was formerly directly connected with Australia. Both divisions were formerly two continents separated362 by a strait, but they have now for the most part sunk below the level of the sea. Wallace, solely on the ground of his accurate chorological observations, has been able in the most acute manner to determine the position of this former strait, the south end of which passes between Balij and Lombok.

Thus, ever since liquid water existed on the earth, the boundaries of water and land have eternally changed, and we may assert that the outlines of continents and islands have never remained for an hour, nay, even for a minute, exactly the same. For the waves eternally and perpetually break on the edge of the coast, and whatever the land in these places loses in extent, it gains in other places by the accumulation of mud, which condenses into solid stone and again rises above the level of the sea as new land. Nothing can be more erroneous than the idea of a firm and unchangeable outline of our continents, such as is impressed upon us in early youth by defective lessons on geography, which are devoid of a geological basis.

I need hardly draw attention to the fact that these geological changes of the earth’s surface have ever been exceedingly important to the migrations of organisms, and consequently to their Chorology. From them we learn to understand how it is that the same or nearly related species of animals and plants can occur on different islands, although they could not have passed through the water separating them, and how other species living in fresh water can inhabit different enclosed water-basins, although they could not have crossed the land lying between them. These islands were formerly mountain peaks of a connected continent, and these lakes were once directly connected with one another. 363 The former were separated by geological depressions, the latter by elevations. Now, if we further consider how often and how unequally these alternating elevations and depressions occur on the different parts of the earth, and how, in consequence of this, the boundaries of the geographical tracts of distribution of species become changed, and if we further consider in what exceedingly various ways the active and passive migrations of organisms must have been influenced by them, then we shall be in a position to completely understand the great variety of the picture which is at present offered to us by the distribution of animal and vegetable species.

There is yet another important circumstance to be mentioned here, which is likewise of great importance for a complete explanation of this varied geographical picture, and which throws light upon many very obscure facts, which, without its help, we should not be able to comprehend. I mean the gradual change of climate which has taken place during the long course of the organic history of the earth. As we saw in our last chapter, at the beginning of organic life on the earth a much higher and more equal temperature must have generally prevailed than at present. The differences of zones, which in our time are so very striking, did not exist at all in those times. It is probable that for many millions of years but one climate prevailed over the whole earth, which very closely resembled, or even surpassed, the hottest tropical climate of the present day. The highest north which man has yet reached was then covered with palms and other tropical plants, the fossil remains of which are still found there. The temperature of this climate at a later period gradually decreased; but still364 the poles remained so warm that the whole surface of the earth could be inhabited by organisms. It was only at a comparatively very recent period of the earth’s history, namely, at the beginning of the tertiary period, that there occurred, as it seems, the first perceptible cooling of the earth’s crust at the poles, and through this the first differentiation or separation of the different zones of temperature or climatic zones. But the slow and gradual decrease of temperature continued to extend more and more within the tertiary period, until at last, at both poles of the earth, the first permanent ice caps were formed.

I need scarcely point out in detail how very much this change of climate must have affected the geographical distribution of organisms, and the origin of numerous new species. The animal and vegetable species, which, down to the tertiary period, had found an agreeable tropical climate all over the earth, even as far as the poles, were now forced either to adapt themselves to the intruding cold, or to flee from it. Those species which adapted and accustomed themselves to the decreasing temperature became new species simply by this very acclimatization, under the influence of natural selection. The other species, which fled from the cold, had to emigrate and seek a milder climate in lower latitudes. The tracts of distribution which had hitherto existed must by this have been vastly changed.

However, during the last great period of the earth’s history, during the quaternary period (or diluvial period) succeeding the tertiary one, the decrease of the heat of the earth from the poles did not by any means remain stationary. The temperature fell lower and lower, nay, even365 far below the present degree. Northern and Central Asia, Europe, and North America from the north pole, were covered to a great extent by a connected sheet of ice, which in our part of the earth seems to have reached the Alps. In a similar manner the cold also advancing from the south pole covered a large portion of the southern hemisphere, which is now free from it, with a rigid sheet of ice. Thus, between these vast lifeless ice continents there remained only a narrow zone to which the life of the organic world had to withdraw. This period, during which man, or at least the human ape, already existed, and which forms the first period of the so-called diluvial epoch, is now universally known as the ice or glacial period.

The ingenious Carl Schimper is the first naturalist who clearly conceived the idea of the ice period, and proved the great extent of the former glaciation of Central Europe by the help of the so-called boulders, or erratic blocks of stone, as also by the “glacier tables.” Louis Agassiz, stimulated by him, and considerably supported by the independent investigations of the eminent geologist Charpentier, afterwards undertook the task of carrying out the theory of the ice period. In England, the geologist Forbes distinguished himself in this matter, and also was the first to apply it to the theory of migrations and the geographical distribution of species dependent upon migration. Agassiz, however, afterwards injured the theory by his one-sided exaggeration, inasmuch as, from his partiality to Cuvier’s theory of cataclysms, he endeavoured to attribute the destruction of the whole animate creation then existing, to the sudden coming on of the cold of the ice period and the “revolution” connected with it.366

It is unnecessary here to enter into detail as to the ice period itself, and into investigations about its limits, and I may omit this all the more reasonably since the whole of our recent geological literature is full of it. It will be found discussed in detail in the works of Cotta,(31) Lyell,(30) Vogt,(27) Zittel,(32) etc. Its great importance to us here is that it helps us to explain the most difficult chorological problems, as Darwin has correctly perceived.

For there can be no doubt that this glaciation of the present temperate zones must have exercised an exceedingly important influence on the geographical and topographical distribution of organisms, and that it must have entirely changed it. While the cold slowly advanced from the poles towards the equator, and covered land and sea with a connected sheet of ice, it must of course have driven the whole living world before it. Animals and plants had to migrate if they wished to escape being frozen. But as at that time the temperate and tropical zones were probably no less densely peopled with animals and plants than at present, there must have arisen a fearful struggle for life between the latter and the intruders coming from the poles. During this struggle, which certainly lasted many thousands of years, many species must have perished and many become modified and been transformed into new species. The hitherto existing tracts of distribution of species must have become completely changed, and the struggle have been continued, nay, indeed, must have broken out anew and been carried on in new forms, when the ice period had reached and gone beyond its furthest point, and when in the post-glacial period the temperature again increased, and organisms began to migrate back again towards the poles.367

In any case this great change of climate, whether a greater or less importance be ascribed to it, is one of those occurrences in the history of the earth which have most powerfully influenced the distribution of organic forms. But more especially one important and difficult chorological circumstance is explained by it in the simplest manner, namely, the specific agreement of many of our Alpine inhabitants with some of those living in polar regions. There is a great number of remarkable animal and vegetable forms which are common to these two far distant parts of the earth, and which are found nowhere in the wide plains lying between them. Their migration from the polar lands to the Alpine heights, or vice versa, would be inconceivable under the present climatic circumstances, or could be assumed at least only in a few rare instances. But such a migration could take place, nay, was obliged to take place, during the gradual advance and retreat of the ice-sheet. As the glaciation encroached from Northern Europe towards our Alpine chains, the polar inhabitants retreating before it—gentian, saxifrage, polar foxes, and polar hares—must have peopled Germany, in fact all Central Europe. When the temperature again increased, only a portion of these Arctic inhabitants returned with the retreating ice to the Arctic zones. Another portion of them climbed up the mountains of the Alpine chain instead, and there found the cold climate suited to them. The problem is thus solved in a most simple manner.

We have hitherto principally considered the theory of the migrations of organisms in so far as it explains the radiation of every animal and vegetable species from a single primæval home, from a “central point of creation,” and the368 dispersion of these species over a greater or less portion of the earth’s surface. But these migrations are also of great importance to the theory of development, because we can perceive in them a very important means for the origin of new species. When animals and plants migrate they meet in their new home, in the same way as do human emigrants, with conditions which are more or less different from those which they have inherited throughout generations, and to which they have been accustomed. The emigrants must either submit and adapt themselves to these new conditions of life or they perish. By adaptation their peculiar specific character becomes the more changed the greater the difference between the new and the old home. The new climate, the new food, but above all, new neighbours in the forms of other animals and plants, influence and tend to modify the inherited character of the immigrant species, and if it is not hardy enough to resist the influences, then sooner or later a new species must arise out of it. In most cases this transformation of an immigrant species takes place so quickly under the influence of the altered struggle for life, that even after a few generations a new species arises from it.

Migration has an especial influence in this way on all organisms with separate sexes. For in them the origin of new species by natural selection is always rendered difficult, or delayed, by the fact that the modified descendants occasionally again mix sexually with the unchanged original form, and thus by crossing return to the first form. But if such varieties have migrated, if great distances or barriers to migration—seas, mountains, etc.—have separated them from the old home, then the danger of a mingling369 with the primary form is prevented, and the isolation of the emigrant form, which becomes a new species by adaptation, prevents its breeding with the old stock, and hence prevents its return in this way to the original form.

The importance of migration for the isolation of newly-originating species and the prevention of a speedy return to the primary form has been especially pointed out by the philosophic traveller, Moritz Wagner, of Munich. In a special treatise on “Darwin’s Theory and the Law of the Migration of Organisms,”(40) Wagner gives from his own rich experience a great number of striking examples which confirm the theory of migration set forth by Darwin in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of his book, where he especially discusses the effect of the complete isolation of emigrant organisms in the origin of new species. Wagner sets forth the simple causes which have “locally bounded the form and founded its typical difference,” in the following three propositions:—1. The greater the total amount of change in the hitherto existing conditions of life which the emigrating individuals find on entering a new territory, the more intensely must the innate variability of every organism manifest itself. 2. The less this increased individual variability of organisms is disturbed in the peaceful process of reproduction by the mingling of numerous subsequent immigrants of the same species, the more frequently will nature succeed, by intensification and transmission of the new characteristics, in forming a new variety or race, that is, a commencing species. 3. The more advantageous the changes experienced by the individual organs are to the variety, the more readily will it be able to adapt itself to the surrounding conditions; and the longer the undisturbed 370 breeding of a commencing variety of colonists in a new territory continues without its mingling with subsequent immigrants of the same species, the oftener a new species will arise out of the variety.

Every one will agree with these three propositions of Moritz Wagner’s . But we must consider his view, that the migration and the subsequent isolation of the emigrant individuals is a necessary condition for the origin of new species, to be completely erroneous. Wagner says, “without a long-enduring separation of colonists from their former species, the formation of a new race cannot succeed—selection, in fact, cannot take place. Unlimited crossing, unhindered sexual mingling of all individuals of a species will always produce uniformity, and drive varieties, whose characteristics have not been fixed throughout a series of generations, back to the primary form.”

This sentence, in which Wagner himself comprises the main result of his investigations, he would be able to defend only if all organisms were of separate sexes, if every origin of new individuals were possible only by the mingling of male and female individuals. But this is by no means the case. Curiously enough, Wagner says nothing of the numerous hermaphrodites which, possessing both the sexual organs, are capable of self-fructification, and likewise nothing of the countless organisms which are not sexually differentiated.

Now, from the earliest times of the organic history of the earth, there have existed thousands of organic species (thousands of which still exist) in which no difference of sex whatever exists, and, in fact, in which no sexual propagation takes place, and which exclusively reproduce themselves 371 in a non-sexual manner by division, budding, formation of spores, etc. All the great mass of Protista, the Monera, Amœbæ, Myxomycetes, Rhizopoda, etc., in short, all the lower organisms which we shall have to enumerate in the domain of Protista, standing midway between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, propagate themselves exclusively in a non-sexual manner. And this domain comprises a class of organisms which is one of the richest in forms, nay, even in a certain respect the richest of all in forms, as all possible geometrical fundamental forms are represented in it. I allude to the wonderful class of the Rhizopoda, or Ray-streamers, to which the lime-shelled Acyttaria and the flint-shelled Radiolaria belong. (Compare chapter xvi.)

It is self-evident, therefore, that Wagner’s theory is quite inapplicable to all these non-sexual organisms. Moreover, the same applies to all those hermaphrodites in which every individual possesses both male and female organs and is capable of self-fructification. This is the case, for instance, in the Flat-worms, flukes, and tape-worms, further in the important Sack-worms (Tunicates), the invertebrate relatives of the vertebrate animals, and in very many other organisms of different groups. Many of these species have arisen by natural selection, without a “crossing” of the originating species with its primary form having been possible.

As I have already shown in the eighth chapter, the origin of the two sexes, and consequently sexual propagation in general, must be considered as a process which began only in later periods of the organic history of the earth, being the result of differentiation or division of labour. The most ancient terrestrial organisms can have propagated themselves372 only in the simplest non-sexual manner. Even now all Protista, as well as all the countless forms of cells, which constitute the body of higher organisms, multiply themselves only by non-sexual generation. And yet there arise here “new species” by differentiation in consequence of natural selection.

But even if we were to take into consideration the animal and vegetable species with separate sexes, in this case too we should have to oppose Wagner’s chief proposition, that “the migration of organisms and their formation of colonies is the necessary condition of natural selection.” August Weismann, in his treatise on the “Influence of Isolation upon the Formation of Species,”(24) has already sufficiently refuted that proposition, and has shown that even in one and the same district one bi-sexual species may divide itself into several species by natural selection. In relation to this question, I must again call to mind the great influence which division of labour, or differentiation, possesses, being one of the necessary results of natural selection. All the different kinds of cells constituting the body of the higher organisms, the nerve cells, muscle cells, gland cells, etc., all these “good species,” these “bonæ species” of elementary organisms, have arisen solely by division of labour, in consequence of natural selection, although they not only never were locally isolated, but ever since their origin have always existed in the closest local relations one with another. Now, the same reasoning that applies to these elementary organisms, or “individuals of the first order,” applies also to the many-celled organisms of a higher order which only at a later date have arisen as “good species” from among their fellows.373

We are therefore of the same opinion as Darwin and Wallace, that the migration of organisms and their isolation in their new home is a very advantageous condition for the origin of new species; but we cannot admit, as Wagner asserts, that it is a necessary condition, and that without it no species can arise. Wagner sets up this opinion, “that migration is a necessary condition for natural selection,” as a special “law of migration”; but we consider it sufficiently refuted by the above-mentioned facts. We have, moreover, already pointed out that in reality the origin of new species by natural selection is a mathematical and logical necessity which, without anything else, follows from the simple combination of three great facts. These three fundamental facts are—the Struggle for Life, the Adaptability, and the Hereditivity of organisms.

We cannot here enter into detail concerning the numerous interesting phenomena furnished by the geographical and topographical distribution of organic species, which are all wonderfully explained by the theory of selection and migration. For these I refer to the writings of Darwin,(1) Wallace,(36) and Moritz Wagner,(40) in which the important doctrine of the limits of distribution—seas, rivers, and mountains—is excellently discussed and illustrated by numerous examples. Only three other phenomena must be mentioned here on account of their special importance. First, the close relation of forms, that is, the striking “family likeness” existing between the characteristic local forms of every part of the globe, and their extinct fossil ancestors in the same part of the globe; secondly, the no less striking “family likeness” between the inhabitants of island groups and those of the neighbouring continent from which the374 islands were peopled; lastly and thirdly, the peculiar character presented in general by the flora and fauna of islands taken as a whole.

All these chorological facts given by Darwin, Wallace, and Wagner—especially the remarkable phenomena of the limited local fauna and flora, the relations of insular to continental inhabitants, the wide distribution of the so-called “cosmopolitan species,” the close relationship of the local species of the present day with the extinct species of the same limited territory, the demonstrable radiation of every species from a single central point of creation—all these, and all other phenomena furnished to us by the geographical and the topographical distribution of organisms, are explained in a simple and thorough manner by the theory of selection and migration, while without it they are simply incomprehensible. Consequently, in the whole of this series of phenomena we find a new and weighty proof of the truth of the Theory of Descent.
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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

Postby admin » Sat Mar 03, 2018 9:22 am



[1] The world is perfect save where Man
Comes in with his strife.

[2] Archebiosis (Bastian), Abiogenesis (Huxley).

[3] Alle Glieder bilden sich aus nach ew’gen Gesetzen,
Und die seltenste Form bewahrt im Geheimniss das Urbild.
Also bestimmt die Gestalt die Lebensweise des Thieres.
Und die Weise zu leben, sie wirkt auf alle Gestalten
Mächtig zurück. So zeiget sich fest die geordnete Bildung,
Welche zum Wechsel sich neigt durch äusserlich wirkende Wesen.

[4]“Einstweilen bis den Bau der Welt
Philosophie zusammenhält,
Erhält sich ihr Getriebe
Durch Hunger und durch Liebe.”

[5] “Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels.”

[6] We must wait for fuller information on the subject of Bathybius, at the hands of the naturalists of the Challenger expedition, before accepting it finally as a distinct organism.—Editor.

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Re: The History of Creation, by Ernst Haeckel

Postby admin » Sat Mar 03, 2018 9:47 am



Reform of Systems by the Theory of Descent.—The Natural System as a Pedigree.—Palæontological Records of the Pedigree.—Petrifactions as Records of Creation.—Deposits of the Neptunic Strata and the Enclosure of Organic Remains.—Division of the Organic History of the Earth into Five Main Periods: Period of the Tangle Forests, Fern Forests, Pine Forests, Foliaceous Forests, and of Cultivation.—The Series of Neptunic Strata.—Immeasurable Duration of the Periods which have elapsed during their Formation.—Deposits of Strata only during the Sinking, not during the Elevation of the Ground.—Other Gaps in the Records of Creation.—Metamorphic Condition of the most Ancient Neptunic Strata.—Small Extent of Palæontological Experience.—Small proportion of Organisms and of Parts of Organisms Capable of Petrifying.—Rarity of many Petrified Species.—Want of Fossilised Intermediate Forms.—Records of the Creation in Ontogeny and in Comparative Anatomy.

The revolutionary influence which the Theory of Descent must exercise upon all sciences, will in all probability affect no branch of science, excepting Anthropology, so much as the descriptive portion of natural history, that which is known as systematic Zoology and Botany. Most naturalists who have hitherto occupied themselves with arranging the different systems of animals and plants, have collected, named, and arranged the different species of these natural bodies 2 with much the same interest as antiquarians and ethnographers collect the weapons and utensils of different nations. Many have not even risen above the degree of intelligence with which people usually collect, label, and arrange crests, stamps, and similar curiosities. In the same manner as some collectors find their pleasure in the similarity of forms, the beauty or rarity of the crests or stamps, and admire in them the inventive art of man, so many naturalists take a delight in the manifold forms of animals and plants, and marvel at the rich imagination of the Creator, at His unwearied creative activity, and at His curious fancy for forming, by the side of so many beautiful and useful organisms, also a number of ugly and useless ones.

This childlike treatment of systematic Zoology and Botany is completely annihilated by the Theory of Descent. In the place of the superficial and playful interest with which most naturalists have hitherto regarded organic structures, we now have the much higher interest of the intelligent understanding which detects in the related forms of organisms their true blood relationships. The Natural System of animals and plants, which was formerly valued either only as a registry of names, to facilitate the survey of the different forms, or as a table of contents for the short expression of their degrees of similarity, receives from the Theory of Descent the incomparably higher value of a true pedigree of organisms. This pedigree is to disclose to us the genealogical connection of the smaller and larger groups. It has to show us in what way the different classes, orders, families, genera, and species of the animal and vegetable kingdoms correspond with the different branches, twigs, and groups of twigs of the pedigree. Every wider and higher category 3 or stage of the system (for example a class, or an order) comprises a number of larger and stronger branches of the pedigree; every narrower and lower category (for example a genus, or a species) only a smaller and thinner group of twigs. It is only when we thus view the natural system as a pedigree that we perceive its true value. (Gen. Morph. ii. Plate XVII. p. 397.)

Since we hold fast this genealogical conception of the Organic System, to which alone undoubtedly the future of classificatory Zoology and Botany belongs, we should now turn our attention to one of the most essential, but also one of the most difficult, tasks of the “non-miraculous history of creation,” namely, to the actual construction of the Organic Pedigree. Let us see how far we are already able to point out all the different organic forms as the divergent descendants of a single or of some few common original forms. But how can we construct the actual pedigree of the animal and vegetable group of forms from our knowledge of them, at present so scanty and fragmentary? The answer to this question lies in what we have already remarked of the parallelism of the three series of development—in the important causal relation which connects the palæontological development of all organic tribes with the embryological development of individuals, and with the systematic development of groups.

In order to accomplish our task we shall first have to direct our attention to palæontology, or the science of petrifactions. For if the Theory of Descent is really true, if the petrified remains of formerly living animals and plants really proceed from the extinct primæval ancestors and progenitors of the present organisms, then, without anything 4 else, the knowledge and comparison of petrifactions ought to disclose to us the pedigree of organisms. However simple and clear this may seem in theory, the task becomes extremely hard and complicated when it is actually taken in hand. Its practical solution would be very difficult even if the petrifactions were to any extent completely preserved. But this is by no means the case. The obvious records of creation which lie buried in petrifactions are imperfect beyond all measure. Hence it is necessary critically to examine these records, and to determine the value which petrifactions possess for the history of the development of organic tribes. As I have previously discussed the general importance of petrifactions as the records of creation, when we were considering Cuvier’s merits in the science of fossils, we may now at once examine the conditions and circumstances under which the remains of organic bodies became petrified and preserved in a more or less recognizable form.

As a rule we find petrifactions or fossils enclosed only in those stones which have been deposited in layers as mud by water, and which are on that account called neptunic, stratified, or sedimentary rocks. The deposition of such strata could of course only commence after the condensation of watery vapour into liquid water had taken place in the course of the earth’s history. After that period, which we considered in our last chapter, not only did life begin on the earth, but also an uninterrupted and exceedingly important transformation of the rigid inorganic crust of the earth. The water began that extremely important mechanical action by which the surface of the earth is perpetually, though slowly, transformed. I may surely presume that it is generally known what an extremely 5 important influence, in this respect, is even yet exercised by water at every moment. As it falls down as rain, trickling through the upper strata of the earth’s crust, and flowing down from heights into hollows, it chemically dissolves different mineral parts of the ground, and mechanically washes away the loose particles. In flowing down from mountains water carries their debris into the plains, or deposits it as mud in stagnant lakes. Thus it continually works at lowering mountains and filling up valleys. In like manner the breakers of the sea work uninterruptedly at the destruction of the coasts and at filling up the bottom of the sea with the debris they wash down. The action of water alone, if it were not counteracted by other circumstances, would in time level the whole earth. There can be no doubt that the mountain masses—which are annually carried down as mud into the sea, and deposited on its floor—are so great that in the course of a longer or shorter period, say a few millions of years, the surface of the earth would be completely levelled and become enclosed by a continuous sheet of water. That this does not happen is owing to the perpetual volcanic action of the fiery-fluid centre of the earth. The surging of the melted nucleus against the firm crust necessitates continual alternations of elevation and depression on the different parts of the earth’s surface. These elevations and depressions for the most part take place very slowly; but, as they continue for thousands of years, by the combined effect of small, interrupted movements, they produce results no less grand than does the counteracting and levelling action of water.

Since the elevations and depressions of the different parts 6 of the earth alternate with one another in the course of millions of years, first this and then that part of the earth’s surface is above or below the level of the sea. I have already given examples of this in the preceding chapter (vol. i. p. 361). Hence, in all probability, there is no part of the outer crust of the earth which has not been repeatedly above and also below the level of the sea. This repeated change explains the variety and the different composition of the numerous neptunic strata of rocks, which in most places have been deposited one above another in considerable thickness. In the different periods of the earth’s history during which these deposits took place there lived various and different populations of animals and plants. When their dead bodies sank to the bottom of the waters, the forms of the bodies impressed themselves upon the soft mud, and imperishable parts, such as hard bones, teeth, shells, etc., became enclosed in it uninjured. These were preserved in the mud, which condensed them into neptunic rock, and as petrifactions they now serve to characterise the respective strata. By a careful comparison of the different strata lying one above another, and the petrifactions preserved in them, it has become possible to decide the relative age of the strata and groups of strata, and to establish, by direct observation, the principal eras of phylogeny, that is to say, the stages in history of the development of animal and vegetable tribes.

The different strata of neptunic rocks deposited one above another, which are composed in very various ways of limestone, clay, and sand, geologists have grouped together into an ideal System or Series, which corresponds with the whole course of the organic history of the earth, or with that portion 7 of the earth’s history during which organic life existed. Just as so-called “universal history” falls into larger and smaller periods, which are characterized by the conditions of development of the most important nations at the respective epochs, and are separated from one another by great events, so we also divide the infinitely longer organic history of the earth into a series of greater and less periods. Each of these periods is distinguished by a characteristic flora and fauna, and by the specially strong development of certain vegetable or animal groups, and each is separated from the preceding and succeeding period by a striking change in the character of its animal and vegetable inhabitants.

In relation to the following survey of the historical course of development which the large animal and vegetable tribes have passed through, it will be desirable to say a few words first as to the systematic classification of the neptunic groups of strata, and the larger and smaller periods corresponding to them. As will be seen directly, we are able to divide the whole of the sedimentary rocks lying one above another into five main groups or periods, each period into several subordinate groups of strata or systems, and each system of strata again into still smaller groups or formations; finally, each formation can again be divided into stages or sub-formations, and each of these again into still smaller layers or beds. Each of the five great rock-groups was deposited during a great division of the earth’s history, during a long era or epoch; each system during a shorter period; each formation during a still shorter period. In thus reducing the periods of the organic history of the earth, and the neptunic strata containing petrifactions deposited during those periods into a connected system, we proceed exactly 8 like the historian who divides the history of nations into the three main divisions of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times, and each of those sections again into subordinate periods and epochs. But the historian by this sharp systematic division, and by fixing the boundary of the periods by particular dates, only seeks to facilitate his survey, and in no way means to deny the uninterrupted connection of events and the development of nations. Exactly the same qualification applies to our systematic division, specification, or classification of the organic history of the earth. Here, too, a continuous thread runs through the series of events unbroken. We must therefore distinctly protest against the idea that by sharply bounding the larger and smaller groups of strata, and the the periods corresponding with them, we in any way wish to adopt Cuvier’s doctrine of terrestrial revolutions, and of repeated new creations of organic populations. That this erroneous doctrine has long since been completely refuted by Lyell, I have already mentioned. (Compare vol. i. p. 127.)

The five great main divisions of the organic history of the earth, or the palæontological history of development, we call the primordial, primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary epochs. Each is distinctly characterized by the predominating development of certain animal and vegetable groups in it, and we might accordingly symbolically designate the five epochs, on the one hand by the names of the groups of the vegetable kingdom, and on the other hand by those of the different classes of vertebrate animals. In this case the first, or primordial epoch, would be the era of the Tangles (Algæ) and skull-less Vertebrates; the second, or primary epoch, that of the Ferns and Fishes; the third, or 9 secondary epoch, that of Pine Forests and Reptiles; the fourth, or tertiary epoch, that of Foliaceous Forests and of Mammals; finally, the fifth, or quaternary epoch, the era of Man, and his Civilization. The divisions or periods which we distinguish in each of the five long eras (p. 14) are determined by the different systems of strata into which each of the five great rock-groups is divided (p. 15). We shall now take a cursory glance at the series of these systems, and at the same time at the populations of the five great epochs.

The first and longest division of the organic history of the earth is formed by the primordial epoch, or the era of the Tangle Forests. It comprises the immense period from the first spontaneous generation, from the origin of the first terrestrial organism, to the end of the Silurian system of deposits. During this immeasurable space of time, which in all probability was much longer than all the other four epochs taken together, the three most extensive of all the neptunic systems of strata were deposited, namely, the Laurentian, upon that the Cambrian, and upon that the Silurian system. The approximate thickness or size of these three systems together amounts to 70,000 feet. Of these about 30,000 belong to the Laurentian, 18,000 to the Cambrian, and 22,000 to the Silurian system. The average thickness of all the four other rock groups, the primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, taken together, may amount at most to 60,000 feet; and from this fact alone, apart from many other reasons, it is evident that the duration of the primordial period was probably much longer than the duration of all the subsequent periods down to the present day. Many thousands of millions of years were required 10 to deposit such masses of strata. Unfortunately, by far the largest portion of the primordial group of strata is in the metamorphic state (which we shall directly explain), and consequently the petrifactions contained in them—the most ancient and most important of all—have, to a great extent, been destroyed and become unrecognisable. Only in one portion of the Cambrian strata have petrifactions been preserved in a recognizable condition and in large quantities. The most ancient of all distinctly preserved petrifactions has been found in the lowest Laurentian strata (in the Ottawa formation), which I shall afterwards have to speak of as the “Canadian Life’s-dawn” (Eozoon canadense).

Although only by far the smaller portion of the primordial or archilithic petrifactions are preserved to us in a recognizable condition, still they possess the value of inestimable documents of the most ancient and obscure times of the organic history of the earth. What seems to be shown by them, in the first place, is that during the whole of this immense period there existed only inhabitants of the waters. As yet, at any rate, among all archilithic petrifactions, not a single one has been found which can with certainty be regarded as an organism which has lived on land. All the vegetable remains we possess of the primordial period belong to the lowest of all groups of plants, to the class of Tangles or Algæ, living in water. In the warm primæval sea, these constituted the forests of the period, of the richness of which in forms and density we may form an approximate idea from their present descendants, the tangle forests of the Atlantic Sargasso sea. The colossal tangle forests of the archilithic period supplied the place of 11 the forest vegetation of the mainland, which was then utterly wanting. All the animals, also, whose remains have been found in archilithic strata, like the plants, lived in water. Only crustacea are met with among the animals with articulated feet, as yet no spiders and no insects. Of vertebrate animals, only a very few remains of fishes are known as having been found in the most recent of all primordial strata, in the upper Silurian. But the headless vertebrate animals, which we call skull-less, or Acrania, and out of which fishes must have been developed, we suppose to have lived in great numbers during the primordial epoch. Hence we may call it after the Acrania as well as after the Tangles.

The primary epoch, or the era of Fern Forests, the second main division of the organic history of the earth, which is also called the palæolithic or palæozoic period, lasted from the end of the Silurian formation of strata to the end of the Permian formation. This epoch was also of very long duration, and again falls into three shorter periods, during which three great systems of strata were deposited, namely, first, the Devonian system, or the old red sandstone; upon that, the Carboniferous, or coal system; and upon this, the Permian system. The average thickness of these three systems taken together may amount to about 42,000 feet, from which we may infer the immense length of time requisite for their formation.

The Devonian and Permian formations are especially rich in remains of fishes, of primæval fish as well as enamelled fish (Ganoids), but the bony fish (Teleostei) are absent from the strata of the primary epoch. In coal are found the most ancient remains of animals living on land, both of articulated 12 animals (spiders and insects) as well as of vertebrate animals (amphibious animals, like newts and frogs). In the Permian system there occur, in addition to the amphibious animals, the more highly-developed reptiles, and, indeed, forms nearly related to our lizards (Proterosaurus, etc.). But, nevertheless, we may call the primary epoch that of Fishes, because these few amphibious animals and reptiles are insignificant in comparison with the immense mass of palæozoic fishes. Just as Fishes predominate over the other vertebrate animals, so Ferns, or Filices, predominate among the plants of this epoch, and, in fact, real ferns and tree ferns (leafed ferns, or Phylopteridæ), as well as bamboo ferns (Calamophytæ) and scaled ferns (Lepidophytæ). These ferns, which grew on land, formed the chief part of the dense palæolithic island forests, the fossil remains of which are preserved to us in the enormously large strata of coal of the Carboniferous system, and in the smaller strata of coal of the Devonian and Permian systems. We are thus justified in calling the primary epoch either the era of Ferns or that of Fishes.

The third great division of the palæontological history of development is formed by the secondary epoch, or the era of Pine Forests, which is also called the mesolithic or mesozoic epoch. It extends from the end of the Permian system to the end of the Chalk formation, and is again divided into three great periods. The stratified systems deposited during this period are, first and lowest, the Triassic system, in the middle the Jura system, and at the top the Cretaceous system. The average thickness of these three systems taken together is much less than that of the primary group, and amounts as a whole only to about 15,000 13 feet. The secondary epoch can accordingly in all probability not have been half so long as the primary epoch.

Just as Fishes prevailed in the primary epoch, Reptiles predominated in the secondary epoch over all other vertebrate animals. It is true that during this period the first birds and mammals originated; at that time, also, there existed important amphibious animals, especially the gigantic Labyrinthodonts, in the sea the wonderful sea-dragons, or Halisaurii, swam about, and the first fish with bones were associated with the many primæval fishes (Sharks) and enamelled fish (Ganoids) of the earlier times; but the very variously developed kinds of reptiles formed the predominating and characteristic class of vertebrate animals of the secondary epoch. Besides those reptiles which were very nearly related to the present living lizards, crocodiles, and turtles, there were, during the mesolithic period, swarms of grotesquely shaped dragons. The remarkable flying lizards, or Pterosaurii, and the colossal land-dragons, or Dinosaurii, of the secondary epoch, are peculiar, as they occur neither in the preceding nor in the succeeding epochs. The secondary epoch may be called the era of Reptiles; but on the other hand, it may also be called the era of Pine Forests, or more accurately, of the Gymnosperms, that is, the epoch of plants having naked seeds. For this group of plants, especially as represented by the two important classes—the pines, or Coniferæ, and the palm-ferns, or Cycadeæ—during the secondary epoch constituted a predominant part of the forests. But towards the end of the epoch (in the Chalk period) the plants of the pine tribe gave place to the leaf-bearing forests which then developed for the first time.



Of the Palæontological Periods, or of the Greater Divisions of the Organic History of the Earth.

I. First Epoch: Archilithic Era. Primordial Epoch.

(Era of Skull-less Animals and Forests of Tangles.)

1. Older Primordial Period or Laurentian Period.
2. Middle Primordial Period ” Cambrian Period.
3. Later Primordial Period ” Silurian Period.
II. Second Epoch: Palæolithic Era. Primary Epoch.
(Era of Fish and Fern Forests.)
4. Older Primary Period or Devonian Period.
5. Mid Primary Period ” Coal Period.
6. Later Primary Period ” Permian Period.
III. Third Epoch: Mesolithic Era. Secondary Epoch.
(Era of Reptiles and Pine Forests.)
7. Older Secondary Period or Trias Period.
8. Middle Secondary Period ” Jura Period.
9. Later Secondary Period ” Chalk Period.
IV. Fourth Epoch: Cænolithic Era. Tertiary Epoch.
(Era of Mammals and Leaf Forests.)
10. Older Tertiary Period or Eocene Period.
11. Newer Tertiary Period ” Miocene Period.
12. Recent Tertiary Period ” Pliocene Period.
V. Fifth Epoch: Anthropolithic Era. Quaternary Epoch.
(Era of Man and Cultivated Forests.)
13. Older Quaternary Period or Ice or Glacial Period.
14. Newer Quaternary Period ” Post Glacial Period.
15. Recent Quaternary Period ” Period of Culture.
(The Period of Culture is the Historical Period, or the Period of Tradition.)



Rock-Groups. / Systems. / Formations. / Synonyms of Formations.

V. Quaternary Group, or Anthropolithic (Anthropozoic) groups of strata. / XIV. Recent (Alluvium) XIII. Pleistocene (Diluvium) / 36. Present; 35. Recent; 34. Post glacial; 33. Glacial / Upper Alluvial; Lower alluvial; Upper diluvial; Lower diluvial

IV. Tertiary Group, or (Cænozoic) groups of strata. / XII. Pliocene (Late tertiary); XI. Miocene (Late tertiary); X. Eocene (Old tertiary) / 32. Arvernian; 31. Sub-Appenine; 30. Falunian; 29. Limburgian; 28. Gypsum; 27. Nummulitic; 26. London clay / Upper pliocene; Lower pliocene; Upper miocene; Lower miocene; Upper eocene; Mid eocene; Lower eocene

III. Secondary Group, or Mesolithic groups of strata / IX. Cretaceous; VIII. Jura; VII. Trias / 25. White chalk; 24. Green sand; 23. Neocomian; 22. Wealden; 21. Portlandian; 20. Oxfordian; 19. Bath; 18. Lias; 17. Keuper; 16. Muschel-kalk; 15. Bunter sand / Upper cretaceous; Mid cretaceous; Lower cretaceous; The Kentish Weald; Upper oolite; Mid oolite; Lower oolite; Lias formation; Upper trias; Mid trias; Lower trias

II. Primary Group, or Palæolithic (Palæozoic) groups of strata / VI. Permian; V. Carbonic (coal); IV. Devonian (Old red sandstone) / 14. Zechstein; 13. ; 12. Carboniferous sandstone ; 11. Carboniferous limestone; 10. Pilton; 9. Ilfracombe; 8. Linton / Upper Permian; Lower Permian; Upper carbonic; Lower carbonic; Upper Devonian; Mid Devonian; Lower Devonian

I. Primordial Group, or Archilithic (Archizoic) groups of strata / III. Silurian; II. Cambrian; I. Laurentian / 7. Ludlow; 6. Llandovery; 5. Llandeilo; 4. Potsdam; 3. Longmynd; 2. Labrador; 1. Ottawa / Upper Silurian; Mid Silurian; Lower Silurian; Upper Cambrian; Lower Cambrian; Upper Laurentian; Lower Laurentian

The fourth main division of the organic history of the 16 earth, the tertiary epoch, or era of Leafed Forests, is much shorter and less peculiar than the three first epochs. This epoch, which is also called the cænolithic or cænozoic epoch, extended from the end of the cretaceous system to the end of the pliocene system. The strata deposited during it amount only to a thickness of about 3,000 feet, and consequently are much inferior to the three first great groups. The three systems also into which the tertiary period is subdivided are very difficult to distinguish from one another. The oldest of them is called eocene, or old tertiary; the newer miocene, or mid tertiary; and the last is the pliocene, or later tertiary system.

The whole population of the tertiary epoch approaches much nearer, on the whole as well as in detail, to that of the present time than is the case in the preceding epochs. From this time the class of Mammals greatly predominates over all other vertebrate animals. In like manner, in the vegetable kingdom, the group—so rich in forms—of the Angiosperms, or plants with covered seeds, predominates, and its leafy forests constitute the characteristic feature of the tertiary epoch. The group of the Angiosperms consists of the two classes of single-seed-lobed plants, or Monocotyledons, and the double-seed-lobed plants, or Dicotyledons. The Angiosperms of both classes had, it is true, made their appearance in the Cretaceous period, and mammals had already occurred in the Jurassic period, and even in the Triassic period; but both groups, the mammals and the plants with enclosed seeds, did not attain their peculiar development and supremacy until the tertiary epoch, so that it may justly be called after them.

The fifth and last main division of the organic history 17 of the earth is the quaternary epoch, or era of Civilization, which in comparison with the length of the four other epochs almost vanishes into nothing, though with a comical conceit we usually call its record the “history of the world.” As the period is characterized by the development of Man and his Culture, which has influenced the organic world more powerfully and with greater transforming effect than have all previous conditions, it may also be called the era of Man, the anthropolithic or anthropozoic period. It might also be called the era of Cultivated Forests, or Gardens, because even at the lowest stage of human civilization man’s influence is already perceptible in the utilization of forests and their products, and therefore also in the physiognomy of the landscape. The commencement of this era, which extends down to the present time, is geologically bounded by the end of the pliocene stratification.

The neptunic strata which have been deposited during the comparatively short quaternary epoch are very different in different parts of the earth, but they are mostly of very slight thickness. They are reduced to two “systems,” the older of which is designated the diluvial, or pleistocene, and the later the alluvial, or recent. The diluvial system is again divided into two “formations,” the older glacial and the more recent post glacial formations. For during the older diluvial period there occurred that extremely remarkable decrease of the temperature of the earth which led to an extensive glaciation of the temperate zones. The great importance which this “ice” or “glacial period” has exercised on the geographical and topographical distribution of organisms has already been explained in the preceding chapter 18 (vol. i. p. 365). But the post glacial period, or the more recent diluvial period, during which the temperature again increased and the ice retreated towards the poles, was also highly important in regard to the present state of chorological relations.

The biological characteristic of the quaternary epoch lies essentially in the development and dispersion of the human organism and his culture. Man has acted with a greater transforming, destructive, and modifying influence upon the animal and vegetable population of the earth than any other organism. For this reason, and not because we assign to man a privileged exceptional position in nature in other matters, we may with full justice designate the development of man and his civilization as the beginning of a special and last main division of the organic history of the earth. It is probable indeed that the corporeal development of primæval man out of man-like apes took place as far back as the earlier pliocene period, perhaps even in the miocene tertiary period. But the actual development of human speech, which we look upon as the most powerful agency in the development of the peculiar characteristics of man and his dominion over other organisms, probably belongs to that period which on geological grounds is distinguished from the preceding pliocene period as the pleistocene or diluvial. In fact the time which has elapsed from the development of human speech down to the present day, though it may comprise many thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, almost vanishes into nothing as compared with the immeasurable length of the periods which have passed from the beginning of organic life on the earth down to the origin of the human race.

19 The tabular view given on page 15 shows the succession of the palæontological rock-groups, systems, and formations, that is, the larger and smaller neptunic groups of strata, which contain petrifactions, from the uppermost, or Alluvial, down to the lowest, or Laurentian, deposits. The table on page 14 presents the historical division of the corresponding eras of the larger and smaller palæontological periods, and in a reversed succession, from the most ancient Laurentian up to the most recent Quaternary period.

Many attempts have been made to make an approximate calculation of the number of thousands of years constituting these periods. The thickness of the strata has been compared, which, according to experience, is deposited during a century, and which amounts only to some few lines or inches, with the whole thickness of the stratified masses of rock, the succession of which we have just surveyed. This thickness, on the whole, may on an average amount to about 130,000 feet; of these 70,000 belong to the primordial, or archilithic; 42,000 to the primary, or palæolithic; 15,000 to the secondary, or mesolithic; and finally only 3,000 to the tertiary, or cænolithic group. The very small and scarcely appreciable thickness of the quaternary, or anthropolithic deposit cannot here come into consideration at all. On an average, it may at most be computed as from 500 to 700 feet. But it is self evident that all these measurements have only an average and approximate value, and are meant to give only a rough survey of the relative proportion of the systems of strata and of the spaces of time corresponding with them.

Now, if we divide the whole period of the organic history of the earth—that is, from the beginning of life on the earth 20 down to the present day—into a hundred equal parts, and if then, corresponding to the thickness of the systems of strata, we calculate the relative duration of the time of the five main divisions or periods according to percentages, we obtain the following result:—


I. Archilithic, or primordial period / 53.6
II. Palæolithic, or primary period / 32.1
III. Mesolithic, or secondary period / 11.5
IV. Cænolithic, or tertiary period / 2.3
V. Anthropolithic, or quaternary period / 0.5
Total . . . / 100.0

According to this, the length of the archilithic period, during which no land-living animals or plants as yet existed, amounts to more than one half, more than 53 per cent.; on the other hand the length of the anthropolithic era, during which man has existed, amounts to scarcely one-half per cent. of the whole length of the organic history of the earth. It is, however, quite impossible to calculate the length of these periods, even approximately, by years.

The thickness of the strata of mud at present deposited during a century, and which has been used as a basis for this calculation, is of course quite different in different parts of the earth under the different conditions in which these deposits take place. It is very slight at the bottom of the deep sea, in the beds of broad rivers with a short course, and in inland seas which receive very scanty supplies of water. It is comparatively great on the sea-shores exposed to strong breakers, at the estuaries of large rivers with long courses, and in inland seas with copious supplies of water. At the mouth of the Mississippi, which carries with it a considerable 21 amount of mud, in the course of 100,000 years about 600 feet would be deposited. At the bottom of the open sea, far away from the coasts, during this long period only some few feet of mud would be deposited. Even on the sea-shores where a comparatively large quantity of mud is deposited the thickness of the strata formed during the course of a century may after all amount to no more than a few inches or lines when condensed into solid stone. In any case, however, all calculations based upon these comparisons are very unsafe, and we cannot even approximately conceive the enormous length of the periods which were requisite for the formation of the systems of neptunic strata. Here we can apply only relative, not absolute, measurements of time.

Moreover, we should entirely err were we to consider the size of these systems of strata alone as the measure of the actual space of time which has elapsed during the earth’s history. For the elevations and depressions of the earth’s crust have perpetually alternated with one another, and the mineralogical and palæontological difference—which is perceived between each two succeeding systems of strata, and between each two of their formations at any particular spot—corresponds in all probability with a considerable intermediate space of many thousands of years, during which that particular part of the earth’s crust was raised above the water. It was only after the lapse of this intermediate period, when a new depression again laid the part in question under water, that there occurred a new deposit of earth. As, in the mean time, the inorganic and organic conditions on this part had undergone a considerable transformation, the newly-formed layer of mud was necessarily composed 22 of different earthy constituents and enclosed different petrifactions.


IV. Tertiary Group of Strata, 3,000 feet. / Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene.

III. Mesolithic Group of Strata.; Deposits of the Secondary Epoch, about 15,000 feet. / IX. Chalk System.; VIII. Jura System.; VII. Trias System.

II. Palæolithic Group of Strata.; Deposits of the Primary Epoch, about 42,000 feet. / VI. Permian System.; V. Coal System.; IV. Devonian System.

I. Archilithic Group of Strata.; Deposits of the Primordial Epoch, about 70,000 feet. / III. Silurian System, about 22,000 feet.; II. Cambrian System, about 18,000 feet.; I. Laurentian System, about 30,000 feet.

The striking differences which so frequently occur between the petrifactions of two strata, lying one above another, are to be explained in a simple and easy manner by the supposition that the same part of the earth’s surface has been exposed to repeated depressions and elevations. Such alternating elevations and depressions take place even now extensively, and are ascribed to the heaving of the fiery fluid nucleus against the rigid crust. Thus, for example, the coast of Sweden and a portion of the west coast of South America are constantly though slowly rising, while the coast of Holland and a portion of the east coast of South America are gradually sinking. The rising as well as the sinking takes place very slowly, and in the course of a century sometimes only amounts to some few lines, sometimes to a few inches, or at most a few feet. But if this action continues uninterruptedly throughout hundreds of thousands of years it is capable of forming the highest mountains.

It is evident that elevations and depressions, such as now can be measured in these places, have uninterruptedly alternated one with another in different places during the whole course of the organic history of the earth. This may be inferred with certainty from the geographical distribution of organisms. (Compare vol. i. p. 350.) But to form a judgment of our palæontological records of creation it is extremely important to show that permanent strata can only be deposited during a slow sinking of the ground under water, but not during its continued rising. When the ground slowly sinks more and more below the level of the 24 sea, the deposited layers of mud get into continually deeper and quieter water, where they can become condensed into stone undisturbed. But when, on the other hand, the ground slowly rises, the newly-deposited layers of mud, which enclose the remains of plants and animals, again immediately come within the reach of the play of the waves, and are soon worn away by the force of the breakers, together with the organic remains which they on close. For this simple but very important reason, therefore, abundant layers, in which organic remains are preserved, can only be deposited during a continuous sinking of the ground. When any two different formations or strata, lying one above the other, correspond with two different periods of depression, we must assume a long period of rising between them, of which period we know nothing, because no fossil remains of the then living animals and plants could be preserved. It is evident, however, that those periods of elevation, which have passed without leaving any trace behind them, deserve a no less careful consideration than the greater or less alternating periods of depression, of whose organic population we can form an approximate idea from the strata containing petrifactions. Probably the former were not of shorter duration than the latter.

From this alone it is apparent how imperfect our records must necessarily be, and all the more so since it can be theoretically proved that the variety of animal and vegetable life must have increased greatly during those very periods of elevation. For as new tracts of land are raised above the water, new islands are formed. Every new island, however, is a new centre of creation, because the animals and plants accidentally cast ashore there, find in 25 the new territory, in the struggle for life, abundant opportunity of developing themselves peculiarly, and of forming new species. The formation of new species has evidently taken place pre-eminently during these intermediate periods, of which, unfortunately, no petrifactions could be preserved, whereas, on the contrary, during the slow sinking of the ground there was more chance of numerous species dying out, and of a retrogression into fewer specific forms. The intermediate forms between the old and the newly-forming species must also have lived during the periods of elevation, and consequently could likewise leave no fossil remains.

In addition to the great and deplorable gaps in the palæontological records of creation—which are caused by the periods of elevation—there are, unfortunately, many other circumstances which immensely diminish their value. I must mention here especially the metamorphic state of the most ancient formations, of those strata which contain the remains of the most ancient flora and fauna, the original forms of all subsequent organisms, and which, therefore, would be of especial interest. It is just these rocks—and, indeed, the greater part of the primordial, or archilithic strata, almost the whole of the Laurentian, and a large part of the Cambrian systems—which no longer contain any recognizable remains, and for the simple reason that these strata have been subsequently changed or metamorphosed by the influence of the fiery fluid interior of the earth. These deepest neptunic strata of the crust have been completely changed from their original condition by the heat of the glowing nucleus of the earth, and have assumed a crystalline state. In this process, however, the form of 26 the organic remains enclosed in them has been entirely destroyed. It has been preserved only here and there by a happy chance, as in the case of the most ancient petrifactions known, the Eozoon canadense, from the lowest Laurentian strata. However, from the layers of crystalline charcoal (graphite) and crystalline limestone (marble), which are found deposited in the metamorphic rocks, we may with certainty conclude that petrified animal and vegetable remains existed in them in earlier times.

Our record of creation is also extremely imperfect from the circumstance that only a small portion of the earth’s surface has been accurately investigated by geologists, namely, England, Germany, and France. But we know very little of the other parts of Europe, of Russia, Spain, Italy, and Turkey. In the whole of Europe, only some few parts of the earth’s crust have been laid open, by far the largest portion of it is unknown to us. The same applies to North America and to the East Indies. There some few tracts have been investigated; but of the larger portion of Asia, the most extensive of all continents, we know almost nothing; of Africa nothing, excepting the Cape of Good Hope and the shores of the Mediterranean; of Australia almost nothing; and of South America but very little. It is clear, therefore, that only quite a small portion, perhaps scarcely the thousandth part of the whole surface of the earth, has been palæontologically investigated. We may therefore reasonably hope, when more extensive geological investigations are made, which are greatly assisted by the constructions of railroads and mines, to find a great number of other important petrifactions. A hint that this will be the case is given by the remarkable petrifactions found in those parts of Africa and 27 Asia which have been minutely investigated,—the Cape districts and the Himalaya mountains. A series of entirely new and very peculiar animal forms have become known to us from the rocks of these localities. But we must bear in mind that the vast bottom of the existing oceans is at the present time quite inaccessible to palæontological investigations, and that the greater part of the petrifactions which have lain there from primæval times will either never be known to us, or at best only after the course of many thousands of years, when the present bottom of the ocean shall have become accessible by gradual elevation. If we call to mind the fact that three-fifths of the whole surface of the earth consists of water, and only two-fifths of land, it becomes plain that on this account the palæontological record must always present an immense gap.

But, in addition to these, there exists another series of difficulties in the way of palæontology which arises from the nature of the organisms themselves. In the first place, as a rule only the hard and solid parts of organisms can fall to the bottom of the sea or of fresh waters, and be there enclosed in the mud and petrified. Hence it is only the bones and teeth of vertebrate animals, the calcareous shells of molluscs, the chitinous skeletons of articulated animals, the calcareous skeletons of star-fishes and corals, and the woody and solid parts of plants, that are capable of being petrified. But soft and delicate parts, which constitute by far the greater portion of the bodies of most organisms, are very rarely deposited in the mud under circumstances favourable to their becoming petrified, or distinctly impressing their external form upon the hardening mud. Now, it must be borne in mind that large classes of 28 organisms, as for example the Medusæ, the naked molluscs without shells, a large portion of the articulated animals, almost all worms, and even the lowest vertebrate animals, possess no firm and hard parts capable of being petrified. In like manner the most important parts of plants, such as the flowers, are for the most part so soft and tender that they cannot be preserved in a recognizable form. We therefore cannot expect to find any petrified remains of these important organisms. Moreover, all organisms at an early stage of life are so soft and tender that they are quite incapable of being petrified. Consequently all the petrifactions found in the neptunic stratifications of the earth’s crust comprise altogether but a very few forms, and of these for the most part only isolated fragments.

We must next bear in mind that the dead bodies of the inhabitants of the sea are much more likely to be preserved and petrified in the deposits of mud than those of the inhabitants of fresh water and of the land. Organisms living on land can, as a rule, become petrified only when their corpses fall accidentally into the water and are buried at the bottom in the hardening layers of mud. But this event depends upon very many conditions. We cannot therefore be astonished that by far the majority of petrifactions belong to organisms which have lived in the sea, and that of the inhabitants of the land proportionately only very few are preserved in a fossil state. How many contingencies come into play here we may infer from the single fact that of many fossil mammals, in fact of all the mammals of the secondary, or mesozoic epoch, nothing is known except the lower jawbone. This bone is in the first place comparatively solid, and in the second place very easily separates 29 itself from the dead body, which floats on the water. Whilst the body is driven away and dissolved by the water, the lower jawbone falls down to the bottom of the water and is there enclosed in the mud. This explains the remarkable fact that in a stratum of limestone of the Jurassic system near Oxford, in the slates of Stonesfield, as yet only the lower jawbones of numerous pouched animals (Marsupials) have been found. They are the most ancient mammals known, and of the whole of the rest of their bodies not a single bone exists. The opponents of the theory of development, according to their usual logic, would from this fact be obliged to draw the conclusion that the lower jawbone was the only bone in the body of those animals.

Footprints are very instructive when we attempt to estimate the many accidents which so arbitrarily influence our knowledge of fossils; they are found in great numbers in different extensive layers of sandstone; for example, in the red sandstone of Connecticut, in North America. These footprints were evidently made by vertebrate animals, probably by reptiles, of whose bodies not the slightest trace has been preserved.1 The impressions which their feet have left on the mud alone betray the former existence of these otherwise unknown animals.

The accidents which, besides these, determine the limits of our palæontological knowledge, may be inferred from the fact that we know of only one or two specimens of very many important petrifactions. It is not ten years since we became acquainted with the imperfect impression of a bird in the Jurassic or Oolitic system, the knowledge of which 30 has been of the very greatest importance for the phylogeny of the whole class of birds. All birds previously known presented a very uniformly organized group, and showed no striking transitional forms to other vertebrate classes, not even to the nearly related reptiles. But that fossil bird from the Jura possessed not an ordinary bird’s tail, but a lizard’s tail, and thus confirmed what had been conjectured upon other grounds, namely, the derivation of birds from lizards. This single fossil has thus essentially extended not only our knowledge of the age of the class of birds, but also of their blood relationship to reptiles. In like manner our knowledge of other animal groups has been often essentially modified by the accidental discovery of a single fossil. The palæontological records must necessarily be exceedingly imperfect, because we know of so very few examples, or only mere fragments of very many important fossils.

Another and very sensible gap in these records is caused by the circumstance that the intermediate forms which connect the different species have, as a rule, not been preserved, and for the simple reason that (according to the principle of divergence of character) they were less favoured in the struggle for life than the most divergent varieties, which had developed out of one and the same original form. The intermediate links have, on the whole, always died out rapidly, and have but rarely been preserved as fossils. On the other hand, the most divergent forms were able to maintain themselves in life for a longer period as independent species, to propagate more numerously, and consequently to be more readily petrified. But this does not exclude the fact that in some cases the connecting intermediate forms of the species have been preserved so perfectly petrified, that 31 even now they cause the greatest perplexity and occasion endless disputes among systematic palæontologists about the arbitrary limits of species.

An excellent example of this is furnished by the celebrated and very variable fresh-water snail from the Stuben Valley, near Steinheim, in Würtemburg, which has been described sometimes as Paludina, sometimes as Valvata, and sometimes as Planorbis multiformis. The snow-white shells of these small snails constitute more than half of the mass of the tertiary limestone hills, and in this one locality show such an astonishing variety of forms, that the most divergent extremes might be referred to at least twenty entirely different species. But all these extreme forms are united by such innumerable intermediate forms, and they lie so regularly above and beside one another, that Hilgendorf was able, in the clearest manner, to unravel the pedigree of the whole group of forms. In like manner, among very many other fossil species (for example, many ammonites, terebratulæ, sea urchins, lily encrinites, etc.) there are such masses of connecting intermediate forms, that they reduce the “dealers in fossil species” to despair.

When we weigh all the circumstances here mentioned, the number of which might easily be increased, it does not appear astonishing that the natural accounts or records of creation formed by petrifactions are extremely defective and incomplete. But nevertheless, the petrifactions actually discovered are of the greatest value. Their significance is of no less importance to the natural history of creation than the celebrated inscription on the Rosetta stone, and the decree of Canopus, are to the history of nations—to archæology and philology. Just as it has 32 become possible by means of these two most ancient inscriptions to reconstruct the history of ancient Egypt, and to decipher all hieroglyphic writings, so in many cases a few bones of an animal, or imperfect impressions of a lower animal or vegetable form, are sufficient for us to gain the most important starting-points in the history of the whole group, and in the search after their pedigree. A couple of small back teeth, which have been found in the Keuper formation of the Trias, have of themselves alone furnished a sure proof that mammals existed even in the Triassic period.

Of the incompleteness of the geological accounts of creation, Darwin, agreeing with Lyell, the greatest of all recent geologists, says:—

“I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, more or less different in the successive chapters, may represent the forms of life which are entombed in our consecutive formations, and which falsely appear to us to have been abruptly introduced. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or even disappear.”—Origin of Species, 6th Edition, p. 289.

If we bear in mind the exceeding incompleteness of palæontological records, we shall not be surprised that we are still dependent upon so many uncertain hypotheses when actually endeavouring to sketch the pedigree of the different organic groups. However, we fortunately possess, besides 33 fossils, other records of the history of the origin of organisms, which in many cases are of no less value, nay, in several cases are of much greater value, than fossils. By far the most important of these other records of creation is, without doubt, ontogeny, that is, the history of the development of the organic individual (embryology and metamorphology). It briefly repeats in great and marked features the series of forms which the ancestors of the respective individuals have passed through from the beginning of their tribe. We have designated the palæontological history of the development of the ancestors of a living form as the history of a tribe, or phylogeny, and we may therefore thus enunciate this exceedingly important biogenetic fundamental principle: “Ontogeny is a short and quick repetition, or recapitulation, of Phylogeny, determined by the laws of Inheritance and Adaptation.” As every animal and every plant from the beginning of its individual existence passes through a series of different forms, it indicates in rapid succession and in general outlines the long and slowly changing series of states of form which its progenitors have passed through from the most ancient times. (Gen. Morph. ii. 6, 110, 300.)

It is true that the sketch which the ontogeny of organisms gives us of their phylogeny is in most cases more or less obscured, and all the more so the more Adaptation, in the course of time, has predominated over Inheritance, and the more powerfully the law of abbreviated inheritance, and the law of correlative adaptation, have exerted their influence. However, this does not lessen the great value which the actual and faithfully preserved features of that sketch possess. Ontogeny is of the most inestimable value 34 for the knowledge of the earliest palæontological conditions of development, just because no petrified remains of the most ancient conditions of the development of tribes and classes have been preserved. These, indeed, could not have been preserved on account of the soft and tender nature of their bodies. No petrifactions could inform us of the fundamental and important fact which ontogeny reveals to us, that the most ancient common ancestors of all the different animal and vegetable species were quite simple cells like the egg-cell. No petrifaction could prove to us the immensely important fact, established by ontogeny, that the simple increase, the formation of cell-aggregates and the differentiation of those cells, produced the infinitely manifold forms of multicellular organisms. Thus ontogeny helps us over many and large gaps in palæontology.

Hand of Nine different Mammals. Pl. IV.
Hand of Nine different Mammals.
1. Man, 2. Gorilla, 3. Orang, 4. Dog, 5. Seal, 6. Porpoise, 7. Bat, 8. Mole, 9. Duck-bill.

To the invaluable records of creation furnished by palæontology and ontogeny are added the no less important evidences for the blood relationship of organisms furnished by comparative anatomy. When organisms, externally very different, nearly agree in their internal structure, one may with certainty conclude that the agreement has its foundation in Inheritance, the dissimilarity its foundation in Adaptation. Compare, for example, the hands and fore paws of the nine different animals which are represented on Plate IV., in which the bony skeleton in the interior of the hand and of the five fingers is visible. Everywhere we find, though the external forms are most different, the same bones, and among them the same number, position, and connection. It will perhaps appear very natural that the hand of man (Fig. 1) differs very little from that of the gorilla (Fig. 2) and of the orang-outang (Fig. 3), his nearest relations. But it will 35 be more surprising if the fore feet of the dog also (Fig. 4), as well as the breast-fin (the hand) of the seal (Fig. 5), and of the dolphin (Fig. 6), show essentially the same structure. And it will appear still more wonderful that even the wing of the bat (Fig. 7), the shovel-feet of the mole (Fig. 8), and the fore feet of the duck-bill (Ornithorhynchus) (Fig. 9), the most imperfect of all mammals, is composed of entirely the same bones, only their size and form being variously changed. Their number, the manner of their arrangement and connection has remained the same. (Compare also the explanation of Plate IV., in the Appendix.) It is quite inconceivable that any other cause, except the common inheritance of the part in question from common ancestors, could have occasioned this wonderful homology or similarity in the essential inner structure with such different external forms. Now, if we go down further in the system below the mammals, and find that even the wings of birds, the fore feet of reptiles and amphibious animals, are composed of essentially the same bones as the arms of man and the fore legs of the other mammals, we can, from this circumstance alone, with perfect certainty, infer the common origin of all these vertebrate animals. Here, as in all other cases, the degree of the internal agreement in the form discloses to us the degree of blood relationship.
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