THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY 277 



"Les Emules de Darwin," vol. II, p. 13.) ''There can no 

 longer be question," says Prof. M. Caullery of the Sorbonne, 

 "of systematically regarding individual development as a repe- 

 tition of the history of the stock. This conclusion results 

 from the very progress made under the inspiration received 

 from this imaginary law, the law of biogenesis." (Smithson. 

 Inst. Rpt. for 1916, p. 325.) 



This collapse of the biogenetic law has tumbled into ruins 

 the elaborate superstructure of genealogy which Haeckel had 

 reared upon it. His series of thirty stages extending from the 

 fictitious "cytodes" up to man, inclusively, is even more worth- 

 less to-day than it was when Du Bois-Reymond made his ironic 

 comment: ''Man's pedigree, as drawn up by Haeckel, is worth 

 about as much as is that of Homer's heroes for critical his- 

 torians." (Revue Scientifique, 1877, I, p. 1101.) Haeckel tried 

 in vain to save his discredited law by means of the expedient 

 of coenogenesis, that is, "the falsification of the ancestral 

 record (palingenesis)." That Nature should be guilty of "falsi- 

 fication" is an hypothesis not to be lightly entertained, and it 

 is more credible, as Wasmann remarks, to assume that Haeckel, 

 and not Nature, is the real falsifier, inasmuch as he has mis- 

 represented Nature in his "fundamental biogenetic law." 

 Csenogenesis is a very convenient device. One can alternate 

 at will between ccenogenesis and palingenesis, just as, in com- 

 parative anatomy, one can alternate capriciously between 

 convergence and homology, on the general understanding of 

 its being a case of: "Heads, I win; tails, you lose" — certainly, 

 there is no objective consideration to restrain us in such pro- 

 cedure. "Such weapons as Caenogensis and Convergence," 

 says Kohlbrugge (in his "Die Morphologische Abstammung des 

 Menschen," 1908) "are unfortunately so shaped that anyone 

 can use them when they suit him, or throw them aside when 

 they do not. They show, therefore, in the prettiest way the 

 uncertainty even now of the construction of the theory of 

 descent. As soon as we go into details it leaves us in the 

 lurch ; it was only while our knowledge was small that every- 



