CHAPTER V 



KECAPITULATION 



The recapitulation of the parental development The consequent re- 

 capitulation of the life-history of the race Neglect of the doctrine of 

 recapitulation by students of heredity Regressive and progressive 

 variations Reversion the same thing as regression Dormant traits 

 Reversed Selection. 



87. EVERY individual who completes the span of days 

 allotted to his kind follows in the footsteps of his parent. 

 He begins life as a unicellular organism, the fertilized ovum ; 

 then, step by step, in orderly succession, he recapitulates the 

 processes by which his parent passed from ovum to embryo, 

 to foetus, to infancy, to adult life. But the recapitulation is 

 never very exact. The child varies from the parent. All this 

 is true in essence of every species of plant and animal, and 

 as far as we know has always been so. Apparent anomalies 

 occur, it is true, but they are anomalies in appearance only, 

 not in reality. Thus among certain lower animals there is 

 alternation of generations, and a plant which has arisen from 

 seed may be propagated for many generations by means of 

 slips and suckers. But whenever the germ-cell recurs, the 

 recapitulation recurs also. In a very real sense the "persons" 

 that arise from the individual which sprang from the germ- 

 cell may be regarded as detached portions, capable of separate 

 existences, of one and the same individual. 



88. But, if the son recapitulates the development of the 

 parent, the latter also recapitulated that of the grandparent, 

 who in turn recapitulated that of the great-grandparent and 

 so on in unending procession. No other method of development 

 is known to us in Nature. A man's child grows into another 

 man because he follows in the developmental footsteps of his 

 father. Did he develop in any other way he would not be a 

 man. For the moment consider only progressive evolution. 

 We shall see presently that progressive evolution never occurs 



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