

EMBRYOGENIC METHOD 59 



favoured by Haeckel, from the Prosimian to the 

 Catarrhinian stage, that is, to the lower Apes of the 

 Old Continent. For the moment, we must acknow- 

 ledge, while keeping within the limits of the docu- 

 ments known, that the exact origin of the order of 

 Apes wholly escapes us. All the hypotheses which 

 have been made, outside that of Haeckel, especially 

 those of Filhol and of Gaudry, on the connection 

 between the Apes and the Suidae are quite as super- 

 ficial and still more inexact. Finally, the point of 

 bifurcation of the Anthropoid group has still to be 

 discovered beyond the Miocene. The hypothesis 

 of the linking of Man with the Anthropoids has 

 found in the discovery of the Pithecanthropus of 

 Java alone a more positive and more recognizable 

 proof. 



I have dwelt rather at length on the Schopfungs 

 geschichte of Ernst Haeckel for the reason that 

 the publication of that book in 1867 marks a 

 double date in the historical development of the 

 evolutionary idea. It characterizes, on the one hand, 

 the general triumph and, so to speak, a kind of 

 resounding apotheosis of the transformist doctrine ; 

 but, at the same time, it fixes the commencement 

 and, up to a certain point, the wherefore of an attack 

 of prudence with regard to the exaggerations of 

 that doctrine. I have shown in the preceding 

 pages the almost general weakness of the palseon- 

 tological arguments adduced by Haeckel in all the 

 chapters of his work and the definite downfall of 

 the greater part of his most fundamental hypo- 

 theses. Many excellent naturalists, in France es- 

 pecially, could not help being shocked, like Milne- 



