MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 249 



False Analogy. 



Some of the most striking and characteristic of 

 Haeckel's methods of ratiocination are specially dis- 

 played in the foregoing attempt to outline the 

 genealogy of our species. Among these may be 

 noted the fallacy of regarding analogous processes as 

 identical. Thus, to his mind the development of 

 the individual animal man, for instance from a 

 simple germ, is but a repetition within a short space 

 of time of what has actually occurred in the develop- 

 ment of the species. Embryological facts in the 

 life-history of the individual animal, ontogenesis, are 

 considered as corresponding exactly with those which 

 must have characterized phylogenesis, or the devel- 

 opment of any species in geological time. The 

 former being open to observation and study, while 

 the latter are not, the facts which must have ob- 

 tained in phylogeny are inferred from the known 

 facts of ontogeny. 



This fallacy of false analogy is one into which 

 Haeckel is constantly lapsing, and one, therefore, 

 against which the reader must always be on the 

 alert. But it is by no means peculiar to Hseckel 

 alone. It is a frequent occurrence in most of our 

 current scientific literature, and has probably been 

 more productive of error than any other one form of 

 sophism. Instead of being employed in its strict 

 sense, as it should always be used in science and 

 philosophy, analogy is taken most loosely or given 

 a meaning it will not bear. In lieu of being under- 

 stood to imply a similarity of relations, which is its 



