THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 229 



In this way our naked and crude biogenetic law 

 assumes a more finished and scientific form : the 

 embryonic development of the individual is a 

 condensed, abbreviated, and to some extent modi- 

 fied epitome of the evolutionary history of its 

 ancestors. That is more modest, but it is a 

 correct expression of the facts. The essential point 

 of the older idea was not in itself wrong ; all that 

 was done was ;to explain the gaps, and leaps, and 

 contradictions in it. 



Now that Oken's share in the theory has been 

 properly appreciated, we may notice another little 

 historical detail. In the period immediately after 

 his time these ideas were ridiculed by men of 

 science, great and small, but they were not exactly 

 *' done to death." Agassiz, the most pronounced 

 creationist and dualist of all the nineteenth-century 

 zoologists, expounded them occasionally as a 

 curious instance of the divine action. In fact, he 

 looked upon the whole of zoology as a mystic 

 cabinet of curiosities — the more curious the better. 

 Thus he came to play with this idea and confirm 

 it, but merely took it at first as a fine figure of 

 speech. Agassiz is a tragical form. He survived 

 Darwin, much in the same way that many an 

 elegant mot-de-salon on the rights of man survived 

 the French Revolution. Suddenly the whole struc- 

 ture of his ideas seemed to fall about him. Where he 

 had played with roses, he now found torches. He 

 reeled like a smitten man, and cried out against 

 the horrid monsters that brought him pain and 

 bitterness. His anxiety began with Darwin, even 



