THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 93 



to discover its parentage in its own development ; 

 the phases through which an animal passes in its 

 progress from the Qgg to the adult are no acci- 

 dental freaks, no mere matters of developmental 

 convenience, but represent more or less closely, in 

 more or less modified manner, the successive an- 

 cestral stages through which the present condition 

 has been acquired." ^ Almost foreseen by Agassiz, 

 suggested by Von Baer, and finally applied by 

 Fritz Muller, this singular law is the key-note 

 of modern Embryology. In no case, it is true, is 

 the recapitulation of the past complete. Ancestral 

 stages are constantly omitted, others are over- 

 accentuated, condensed, distorted, or confused ; 

 while new and undecipherable characters occasion- 

 ally appear. But it is a general scientific fact, that 

 over the graves of a myriad aspirants the bodies 

 of Man and of all higher Animals have risen. No 

 one knows why this should be so. Science, at 

 present, has no rationale of the process adequate 

 to explain it. It was formerly held that the 

 entire animal creation had contributed something 

 to the anatomy of Man ; or that as Serres ex- 

 pressed it, " Human Organogenesis is a transitory 

 Comparative Anatomy." But though Man has not 

 such a monopoly of the past as is here inferred 

 * Marshall, Vertebrate Embryology^ p. 26. 



