352 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



Biology, rich as this unfortunately is in errors. Only in the 

 magnificent germ-history of the Bombinator by Alexander 

 Goette is incomprehensible nonsense and derision of every 

 reasonable causal connection in evolution more nakedly set 

 forth. (Cf. vol. i. pp. 65, 66.) His announces, as the final 

 result of his investigations, " that a comparatively simple 

 law of growth is the only essential in the first process of 

 evolution. All formation, whether it consist in fission of 

 layers, or in the formation of folds, or in complete articula- 

 tion, results from this fundamental law." Unfortunately 

 the author does not say in what this all-embracing " law of 

 growth" really consists; just like other opponents of the 

 theory of descent who substitute a great "law of evolution," 

 without telling anything of its nature. From the study of 

 the ontogenetic works of His, on the ot. er hand, it soon 

 becomes evident that he conceives form-constructing 

 " Mother Nature " merely as a kind of clever dressmaker ; 

 by cutting out the germ-layers in various ways, by bend- 

 ing, folding, pulling, and splitting them, this clever semp- 

 stress easily brings into existence the various forms of 

 animal species, by " development " (!). The bendings and 

 foldings especially play the most important part. Not only 

 the differentiation of head and trunk, of right and left, of 

 central stem and periphery, but also the rudiment of the 

 limbs, as also the articulation of the brain, the sense-organs, 

 the primitive vertebral column, the heart, and the earliest 

 intestines, can be shown, with convincing necessity (!) to be 

 mechanical results of the first development of folds. Most 

 grotesque is the mode in which the dressmaker proceeds in 

 forming the two pairs of limbs. Their first form is deter- 

 mined by the crossing of four folds bordering the body, 



