THE EMBEYOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 137 



empirical truths, which may be directly proved by 

 microscopic observation, and clung to the old dogma 

 of " preformation." This theory assumed that in the 

 human ovum — and in the egg of all other animals — 

 the organism was already present, or " pre-formed," 

 in all its parts : the " evolution " of the embryo con- 

 sisted literally in an "unfolding" (evolutio) of the 

 folded organs. One curious consequence of this error 

 was the theory of scatulation, which we have men- 

 tioned on p. 55 ; since the ovary had to be admitted 

 to be present in the embryo of the woman, it was also 

 necessary to suppose that the germs of the next genera- 

 tion were already formed in it, and so on in infinitum. 

 Opposed to this dogma of the " Ovulists " was the 

 equally erroneous notion of the " Animalculists "; the 

 latter held that the germ was not really in the female 

 ovum, but in the paternal element, and that the store 

 of succeeding generations was to be sought in the 

 spermatozoa. 



Leibnitz consistently applied this theory of scatula- 

 tion, or " boxing-up," to the human soul ; he denied that 

 either soul or body had a real development {epigenesis), 

 and said in his Theodicy : " Thus I consider that the 

 souls which are destined one day to become human exist 

 in the seed, like those of other species ; that they have 

 existed in our ancestors as far back as Adam — that is, 

 since the beginning of the world — in the forms of 

 organised bodies." Similar notions prevailed in biology 

 and philosophy until the third decade of the present 

 century, when the reform of embryology by Baer gave 

 them their death blow. In the province of psychology, 

 however, they still find many adherents ; they form 

 one group of the many curious mystical ideas which 

 give us a living illustration of the ontogeny of the soul. 



