144 Darwin as an Anthropologist 



cenogenesis. As early as 1874 I had emphasised, in the first chapter 

 of my Evolution of Man, the importance of discriminating carefully 

 between these two sets of phenomena : 



" In the evolutionary appreciation of the facts of embryology we 

 must take particular care to distinguish sharply and clearly between 

 the primary, palingenetic evolutionary processes and the secondary, 

 cenogenetic processes. The palingenetic phenomena, or embryonic 

 recapitulations, are due to heredity, to the transmission of characters 

 from one generation to another. They enable us to draw direct 

 inferences in regard to corresponding structures in the development 

 of the species (e.g. the chorda or the branchial arches in all vertebrate 

 embryos). The cenogenetic phenomena, on the other hand, or the 

 embryonic variations, cannot be traced to inheritance from a mature 

 ancestor, but are due to the adaption of the embryo or the larva to 

 certain conditions of its individual development (e.g. the amnion, the 

 allantois, and the vitelline arteries in the embryos of the higher 

 vertebrates). These cenogenetic phenomena are later additions ; we 

 must not infer from them that there were corresponding processes in 

 the ancestral history, and hence they are apt to mislead." 



The fundamental importance of these facts of comparative anatomy, 

 atavism, and the rudimentary organs, was pointed out by Darwin in 

 the first part of his classic work, The Descent of Man and Selection 

 in Relation to Sex (1871) 1 . In the "General summary and con- 

 clusion " (chap, xxi.) he was able to say, with perfect justice : " He 

 who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature 

 as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a 

 separate act of creation. He will be forced to admit that the close 

 resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog — 

 the construction of his skull, limbs, and whole frame on the same 

 plan with that of other mammals, independently of the uses to which 

 the parts may be put — the occasional reappearance of various struc- 

 tures, for instance of several muscles, which man does not normally 

 possess, but which are common to the Quadrumana — and a crowd of 

 analogous facts — all point in the plainest manner to the conclusion 

 that man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common 

 progenitor." 



These few lines of Darwin's have a greater scientific value than 

 hundreds of those so-called "anthropological treatises," which give 

 detailed descriptions of single organs, or mathematical tables with 

 series of numbers and what are claimed to be " exact analyses," but 

 are devoid of synoptic conclusions and a philosophical spirit. 



Charles Darwin is not generally recognised as a great anthro- 

 pologist, nor does the school of modern anthropologists regard him 



1 Descent of Man (Popular Edit.), p. 927. 



