

THE RECAPITULATION OF THE PARENT 23 



imagine a progressive variation which is not a prolongation, a step 

 added to a complete recapitulation of the parental development, or 

 a retrogressive variation which is not an abbreviation, an incom- 

 plete recapitulation of the parental development, he will fail again. 



41. Amongst typical unicellular organisms there can, of course, 

 be no recapitulation of the kind that occurs amongst higher types ; 

 the individual divides into two daughter-cells which resemble itself 

 and which separate ; there is no development of a cell-community, 

 and consequently no recapitulation of the process of developing 

 one. But with multicellular organisms from first to last recapitula- 

 tion must have been the sole method of development. It is the 

 only method by which the cell-community, the individual, as 

 distinguished from the single cell, can grow into the likeness of 

 the parent community, and so become adapted to the environment 

 in which it finds itself. Starting from the same point, it must 

 follow the same road to reach the same goal. The typical uni- 

 cellular organism, on the other hand, treads no developmental 

 footsteps ; it remains stationary at the starting-point. If the child 

 of a man, for example, did not recapitulate the development of his 

 parent he would be a * monster.' Monsters are known to us, but, 

 outside mythology, not monsters who survive and have offspring. 

 Development of the cell-community, otherwise than by recapitula- 

 tion of the parental development, is indeed not entirely inconceiv- 

 able ; for we can imagine that an elephant, for instance, may give 

 birth to a mouse, or a human being to an acorn. But it never 

 happens. It matters not in the least whether we accept the 

 popular doctrine that the higher types were specially and divinely 

 created as highly organized cell-communities, much like their latest 

 descendants, or whether we hold the scientific theory that they were 

 derived originally from lowly unicellular forms of which the germ- 

 cell is the modern representative. In any case there must have 

 been recapitulation of the parent in every generation. 1 



42. But, though, in the case of individuals who themselves 

 survive and have offspring, the recapitulation of the parental 

 development invariably occurs, it is not necessarily indeed it 

 never is quite complete nor accurate. The child varies from the 

 parent in every stage of development as embryo, as fcetus, and 



1 The argument is not affected by the occurrence of what is known as alterna- 

 tion of generations, by the budding of offspring from parents which have arisen 

 from germ-cells, nor even by the fact that parents and offspring sometimes 

 develop differently when the conditions under which development occurs are 

 different. Under similar conditions they would have developed along similar 

 lines. See 92. 



