116 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



between the development of the individual and the 

 development of the ancestral line to which the indi- 

 vidual belongs. He showed that in every organism, 

 as well as in its component parts, there is a gradual 

 progress from the simple to the complex, from the 

 general to the special. As Haeckel puts it, " ontog- 

 eny is a recapitulation of phylogeny, or, somewhat 

 more explicitly, the series of forms through which 

 the individual organism passes during its progress 

 from the egg-cell to its fully developed state, is a 

 brief compressed reproduction of the long series of 

 forms through which the animal ancestors of that 

 organism, or the ancestral forms of its species, have 

 passed from the earliest period of so-called organic 

 creation down to the present time." 



Thus, observation shows, as the theory of Evolu- 

 tion demands, that the germs of all animals are, at 

 the outset, exactly like each other; but in the 

 process of development each germ acquires, first, 

 the differential characteristics of the sub-kingdom to 

 which it belongs ; then, successively, the characteris- 

 tics of its class, order, family, genus, species and 

 race. For example, the highest mammal, man, be- 

 gins his corporeal existence as a simple germ-cell, in 

 form and appearance like unto an adult amceba, 

 and utterly indistinguishable from the germ-cell of 

 other vertebrates. As development progresses the 

 embryo gradually becomes more and more differen- 

 tiated. In its earlier stages it may be recognized as 

 the embryo of a vertebrate, but it is impossible to 

 tell to which class of vertebrates it belongs. So far 



1 " The Evolution of Man," vol. I, pp. 7-8. 



