HAECKEL'S GENESIS OF MAN, OR HISTORY OF THE 

 DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE. 1 



I. 



GENERAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



IT is no derogation from the epoch-making labors of Charles 

 Darwin to admit that the arguments he has presented in sup- 

 port of his celebrated theory constitute, as it were, but the half of 

 the vast array which the present state of biological science is capable 

 of marshalling in its defence. 



The sources from which the evidences of descent and natural 

 selection must be derived, may be divided into two general classes : 

 First, Paleontology, Comparative Anatomy and Osteology, and 

 Geographical Distribution (Chorology), i. e., a comparison of the 

 adult forms of animals both living and fossil (Phytogeny) ; and 

 Second, the study of embryonic changes and post-natal metamor- 

 phoses, or a comparison of undeveloped animal forms (Ontogeny). 

 Of these two classes it may be said that the first have been fur- 

 nished by Darwin, the second by Haeckel. Not that Darwin, 

 either in his Origin of Species or in his Descent of Man, has wholly 

 ignored the bearing of embryological considerations upon his 

 theory. In the former work he has devoted seventeen pages of 

 one of his concluding chapters to " Development and Embry- 

 ology ; " the greater part of which, however, is occupied in pointing 

 out the importance of the various kinds of metamorphosis, chiefly 

 as it is observed in insects, amphibians, etc., after birth; only inci- 

 dentally referring to those more obscure metamorphoses which 

 take place within the egg or the uterus. 



He does allude, however, more directly to Von Baer's law, but 

 without designating it as such ; and contents himself with quoting 

 the passage, cited also by Haeckel in the preface to the third edi- 

 tion of his History of Creation (1870), in which the great Russian 

 embryologist remarks upon the striking similarity of many em- 



1 Anthropogenic, oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen, von Ernst Haeckel, 

 Professor an der Universitat Jena. Leipsic, 1874. 



