CHAPTER XV 



LEADING ARGUMENTS FOR DESCENT 



WE shall here consider a few last argu 

 ments that are still to be taken into 

 account in showing the futility of the 

 attempts to trace man back to a purely animal 

 source. We are now all familiar with what is 

 well described as the Haeckelian &quot;hoax&quot; that was 

 successfully perpetrated upon the scientific world 

 for a length of years. The embryonic growth 

 of man was fancifully compared with the develop 

 ment of the human race. Every individual was 

 thus said to pass through various stages repre 

 senting a supposed faithful reproduction of the 

 evolution of all his race, from a single primitive 

 cell, the imaginary Moneron, through worm, fish 

 and ape, with all the intermediate forms, on to 

 ] Homo sapiens, or modern man. All this was de 

 lightfully ingenious, its only fault being that it was 

 not true. 



Haeckel at first postulated twenty-two and later 

 thirty stages of development, by which he pur 

 posed to prove the descent of man from the beast, 

 and so, as he thought and expressly stated, to de- 



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