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Even Haeckel admits that snails of very different bodily structure may form very similar and even hardly distinguishable shells. Fleischmann further asserts that Haeckel’s “fundamental biogenetic law” has utterly collapsed. “Recapitulation” does not occur. Selenka’s figures of ovum-segmentation show that there are specific differences in the individual groups.
Under the guidance of the biogenetic law, and on the basis of the evidence we have obtained, we now turn to the interesting task of determining the series of man's animal ancestors. Phylogeny us a whole is an inductive science.
"Yes, I'm talking English," nodded the applicant. "We also believe," he added, growing bolder, "in the fundamental, biogenetic law that ontogenesis is an abridged repetition of philogenesis." "He says they believe in Genesis," remarked the Old Mennonite, appealing for aid, with bewildered eyes, to the other members. "Maybe he's a Jew yet!" put in Nathaniel Puntz. "We also believe," Mr.
A still higher and more inscrutable mystery is life, that something which clothes itself in each infinitely varied and beautiful as well as unbeautiful form of matter. We can evoke electricity at will from many different sources, but we can evoke life only from other life; the biogenetic law is inviolable. Professor Soddy says, "Natural philosophy may explain a rainbow but not a rabbit."
We may now, therefore, approach our proper task, and reconstruct the phylogeny of man in its chief lines with the aid of this evidence of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. In this the reader will soon see the immense importance of the direct application of the biogenetic law.
It is also proper to mention here the fact that in another place Hertwig no longer recognizes so fully the dogma set up by Fritz Mueller and Haeckel which is so closely bound up with Darwinism. I mean the so-called "biogenetic principle" according to which the individual organism is supposed to repeat in its development the development of the race during the course of ages.
Moreover, the embryonic states of development show also, in all their similarity, even in the very first stages, and with especial distinctness in these first stages, many differences between the single species; and this is true especially of those species which, according to the followers of this so-called biogenetic maxim, should lie in the same stem-line, so that the direct scientific value of the embryological results to the palæontological investigation, or of the latter to the former, is so far very slight.
Here we stand at the very limit that separates the older and the new science or philosophy of nature. The whole of the results of recent morphological research compel us irresistibly to recognise the biogenetic law and its far-reaching consequences. These are, it is true, irreconcilable with the legends and doctrines of former days, that have been impressed on us by religious education.
Before we approach our proper task, and, with the aid of our ontogenetic acquirements and the biogenetic law, follow step by step the paleontological development of our animal ancestors, let us glance for a moment at another, and apparently quite remote, branch of science, a general consideration of which will help us in the solving of a difficult problem.
With this we reach the lowest of the solid data to which we are to apply our biogenetic law, and by which we may deduce the extinct ancestor from the embryonic form. But the further question now arises: "Whence came these first amoebae with which the history of life began at the commencement of the Laurentian epoch?" There is only one answer to this.
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