58 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



not justified by facts. To the present day no 

 connecting link has been discovered. 1 



Zoology, or rather the comparative history of 

 individual evolution, has furnished another series of 

 arguments in favour of the descent of man from 

 beasts. This biogenetic principle was laid down 

 first by Fritz Miiller and developed later by Ernst 

 Haeckel. According to it the development of the 

 individual is only an abbreviated and partially 

 modified reproduction of the development of the 

 race. Haeckel worked out the application of this 

 principle to man in great detail, and tried to prove 

 that man in his embryonic growth passes through 

 twenty -two later on the number was raised 

 to thirty stages of development, corresponding 

 with the same number of stages of ancestors, 

 some of which answer to still existing animal 

 forms, but others are purely imaginary and postu 

 lated by Haeckel for the sake of his theory. This 

 argument attracted much attention and found many 

 to support it in popular circles. People scarcely 

 ventured to doubt that man, in his individual 



1 What are believed to be the oldest human, or quasi-human, remains 

 ever discovered have been unearthed near Chapelle-aux- Saints, in the 

 Department of the Correze, and acquired for 60 by the Paris Museum 

 of Natural History. M. Perrier, director of that institution, in a com 

 munication to the Academy of Sciences, assigns the remains to the Pleisto 

 cene or Glacial Period. From description they appear to be the long- 

 sought missing link, being neither man nor ape, but having characteristics 

 of both. The skull more resembles that of a human being, but the shape 

 of the limbs indicates that the creature walked on all-fours rather than 

 erect. In close juxtaposition to the skeleton were found the teeth of a 

 rhinoceros. Renter. 



