THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 231 



first to create the necessary terms for arranging it 

 distinctly. In the language of the old legend, he 

 called the day day, and the night night. To the 

 story of ancestral development, or the evolution 

 of the stem, he gave the name of phylogeny^ or 

 stem-history (phylon = stem). The word circulates 

 very widely to-day. The story of the development 

 of the individual until it reaches maturity was 

 then called ontogeny (o?^ = being), which coincides 

 generally with embryology (though it may also 

 include the growth of the child). The law then 

 ran : Ontogeny is an abbreviated and frequently 

 disarranged epitome of phylogeny. Special atten- 

 tion was drawn to the qualifications " abbreviated " 

 and " disarranged." 



Here again two fresh names were invented. In 

 so far as the embryonic development is a true 

 recapitulation of the stem-history, it is called 

 palingenesis, or repetition of the ancestral traits. 

 When the development is altered by new adap- 

 tations it is called cenogenesis, " foreign " or ^' dis- 

 turbing " development. 



It has been objected by small-minded critics that 

 Haeckel forces nature to mar its own work. The 

 real meaning is quite clear if we bear in mind the 

 blunder of Oken. In this case " disturbed develop- 

 ment " is merely an expression of the fact that the 

 laws we invent are ideal forms, and not always con- 

 venient realities. We learn by heart that the earth 

 is a globe, and its orbit is an ellipse. Neither of 

 the two propositions is strictly accurate ; no mathe- 

 matical figure even has objective reality. By the 



