HAECKEL: BIOGENETIC LAW 257 



last for life in the lower fishes. The next phase which 

 follows on 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.' 1 



The biogenetic law went beyond both the Meckel-Serres 

 law and the law of von Baer in that it recognised that the 

 ancestral history of the species accounts in part for the 

 course which the development of the individual takes, that in 

 a certain sense, though not in the crude way supposed by 

 AKjIaeckel, phytogeny is_the cause of ontogeny. This thought, 

 "I that the or^amiTsrrris^efore all an historical being, is of course 

 implied in the evolution idea, is indeed the essential core of 

 it. Take away this element from the biogenetic law not a 

 difficult matter and it becomes merely a law of idealistic 

 morphology, applicable to evolution considered as an ideal 

 process, as the progressive development in the Divine thought 

 of archetypal models. 



As a book, the General Morphology suffers a good deal 

 from the arid, schematic, almost scholastic manner of 

 exposition adopted. Haeckel's Prussian mania for organisa- 

 tion, for absolute distinctions, for iron-bound formalism, is 

 here given full scope. A treatment less adequate to the 

 variety, fluidity and changeableness of living things could 

 hardly be imagined. 



His doctrine, though it remains essentially unchanged, 

 receives in his later works a less formal and more concrete 

 expression, and, in particular, his views on the biogenetic 

 law undergo some small modification. 



Even in the General Morphology Haeckel had recognised 

 that ontogeny is neither a complete nor an entirely accurate 

 recapitulation of phylogeny ; he had admitted, following 

 F. Miiller, that the true course of recapitulation was 

 frequently modified by larval and fcetal adaptations. As 

 time went on, he was forced to hedge more and more on this 

 point, and finally in his Anthropogenic (1874) and his second 

 1 Cf. a parallel passage from Serres, supra, p. 82. 



