60 Prof. Carl Vofft on some Darivimstic Heresies. 



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them that there is not and cannot be harmonious development 

 in any organism, it being of course understood that a harmo- 

 nious creature must have all the organs and systems of organs 

 brought to the same level of perfection. There can only be 

 relative harmonies, in this sense, that one or several organs 

 become preponderantly developed, and that the others adapt 

 themselves in such a manner as not to impede but to sustain 

 the functions of these preponderant organs. 



Man himself is a proof of what we advance. In him every- 

 thing is subordinated to the development of the brain. From 

 almost all other points of view he is a retrograde organism, of 

 which the organs, taken separately, are often very inferior to 

 those of other animals. The limbs have retained the ancient 

 pentadactyle type. The eye itself, the superiority of which 

 has been so much vaunted, is in certain respects very 

 defective. 



But we arrive at yet other conclusions. If the ulterior 

 development takes place by one of the three courses above 

 indicated, or by their combination, it follows that the possi- 

 bility of tracing one or the other of these courses must origi- 

 nally exist — in other words, the organs or the rudiments of 

 the organs subject to development and transformation must 

 exist in the anterior conditions either in the embryos or in 

 the ancestors. 



From what precedes some consequences result fatal to several 

 dogmas almost universally accepted. There has been esta- 

 blished a so-called biogenetic law, according to which the 

 ontogeny and the phylogeny must correspond exactly. The 

 embryos must pass compendiously through the same phases 

 which the stock has passed through during the geological 

 epochs. 



From what we have said of relative harmonies it follows 

 that this law is absolutely false in its foundation, and a careful 

 investigation of embryogeny in fact shows that the embryos 

 have relative harmonies of their own quite different from those 

 of the adults. The embryo of a mammal has a chorda dor- 

 salis and branchial clefts analogous to those of a fish or of one 

 of the lower Amphibia. Can there have been an ancestor 

 organized in the same fashion ? Never ! for such a creature 

 could not have lived, having neither intestine, nor locomotive 

 organs, nor brain, nor organs of sense fitted to perform their 

 functions, which, however, are necessary for free and inde- 

 pendent existence. 



To explain these contradictions the word cctnogeyiy, falsified 

 embrogeny, has been invented. Poor logic, how it is tor- 

 tured! Nature falsifying herself! 



